by Janny Wurts
Now Harris did sit up, incredulity etched across lines left by laughter and self-indulgence. 'Damn, boy. You've been had. I know you're rich, and that you've dumped all of Daddy's allowance into tracking skip-runners, but didn't anyone tell you? Freerlanders never sell out on a comrade. Mac James has teen named in their honor song since the day he jammed that surveillance station over Freermoon and knocked it out of orbit.'
Jensen returned an arch look. 'This Freerlander is the one whose ancestral burial grounds got slagged under nine tons of radioactive junk, direct result of that foray.'
Harris flopped backward. 'OK,' he agreed in defeat. Jensen's back-up informant wouldn't be lying for gain, but hell-bent on bloody revenge. Harris wasted no energy wondering who else besides rebels his aristocratic senior had courted for access to Mac James's secrets. He shrugged one shoulder and said, 'So your damnable pirate has business on Guildstar? So what?'
Jensen's brown eyes narrowed. Because it made no sense, he thought, slipping into one of those sudden, uncommunicative silences that claimed him when he contemplated the skip-runner captain whose activities preoccupied him wholly since the Khalian wars wound down. Combat action was reduced to a minor few far-flung outposts, and the present best chance for glory and promotion remained the capture of MacKenzie James. And James, who was never careless, never forthright, and never in his life involved in honest trade, should have been anathema in a system as straitlaced as Guildstar. Half the merchants on the council there had suffered losses due to Mac's operations; his ship, the Marity, should in theory have been blown to bits the instant she applied for a docking bay.
Webbing creaked as Harris shoved to his feet. His pilot's reflexes spared him from stepping unshod on spilled tacks, but the near miss sent him muttering toward the galley cubicle for coffee, or beer, or the chocolate bars he ate after difficult flights that unjustly never fleshed out his middle; even his tailored dress uniform hung on him like a mechanic's coverall.
Jensen's lips thinned in distaste. Harris's sloppiness was tolerable only because he could fly the shorts off just about all of his peers. And if Harris resented his assignment on Sail, a three-man scoutship commanded by a lieutenant whose father had stonewalled all reasonable opportunity for advancement, the pilot was too lackadaisical to care. Jensen despised such lack of ambition, but kept his contempt to himself. Without Harris, Sail had no prayer of intercepting the Marity. Longingly, Jensen reached out and fingered the single green pin in the display. How would his pilot respond, he wondered, if he knew that Daddy's allowance had gone toward the spreading of false information? Would Harris file for transfer if he understood that the green pin marked a trap most painstakingly laid to entice the Marity's master, precisely so that Sail could effect a capture?
But the Marity, damn her wayward, disingenuous traitor of a captain, appeared not to be buying; instead she was making a third run to Guildstar, decorously scheduled as the merchanter she assuredly wasn't.
Jensen loosened a clenched fist and retrieved a marker, a blue one; with determined steadiness he imbedded the pin by the existing pair over Guildstar, then muttered, 'It makes no sense.'
Though Harris could overhear from the galley, Jensen felt no embarrassment. While other officers jockeyed for leave to visit wives and families, the lieutenant curried favor with Intelligence. He was first among the lower ranks to hear that the Khalia had been armed and financed by the Syndicate; the shock just beginning to filter down from above was that war was far from over. The heated issue now was location of the Syndicate's worlds. Weasel sources held no clue, spies in the most sensitive positions drew blanks, and the brass was reduced to screening hearsay in a vain search for coordinates. Jensen viewed the dilemma with an eye for opportunity. His passion to trap MacKenzie James took on increased importance: a skip-runner who trafficked in state secrets and whose record held multiple charges of treason would be acquainted with the Alliance's enemies. The Syndicate should be numbered among his customers. If James did not know their home system, he would have a contact, or a base of operations that would open a direct lead. To capture him, to claim the hero's honor for uncovering the turf of the enemy, Jensen was prepared to stake his name and career.
Lieutenant Michael Christopher Jensen, Jr, tapped the blue pin into the holo map, then considered another red one with a speculative frown. Mac James had pilfered plans for prototype weapons the Fleet had in classified research; the designs had not turned up in Indy hands, as everyone first supposed; where had James sold his booty that time? Where?
The blue pin mocked, by Guildstar.
'None of this makes sense, damn you to Weasel castration!' Jensen exploded, as though the arch criminal he hunted could hear his curse across space.
In the galley cubicle, surrounded by crumpled cups and a fashion magazine left by the ensign, Harris lifted doubtful eyebrows under a crown of red-gold hair. 'Obsessed,' he muttered to himself, and the coffee just ordered from the dispenser sat cooling while he rummaged under the mission's accumulation of debris after his illicit cache of beer.
* * *
In a dusty rebel settlement far beyond Sail's patrol, a bar had been erected from slabs of modular siding filched from derelict stations and an abandoned colonial settlement. The corners did not match, and the sand took advantage. The floors were terminally gritty. In a side room, walled off by a fringed curtain, a Freerlander raised her cowl to veil a vicious smile. Her narrowed, desert-weathered eyes caught topaz light from a candle flame as she shifted gaze to the man who sat in the shadows. 'The young officer was told outright, Captain. Guildstar, the time, the date. Everything short of your com codes, but the word is he hangs back, still.'
A dry chuckle answered from the darkness. Pale eyes flicked up and glinted, while on the wine-sticky tabletop, a pair of hands scarred by coil burns flexed and straightened and flexed with an ease that, by the nature of such injuries, never should have been possible. Over the noise of the spacers' bar beyond the doorway, a voice equally grainy and grim observed, 'Then the boy is not quite the brash fool he once was. No point in renewing the lease to that merchanter when this run's finished. I'll recall Marity when she makes port at Guildstar. Let out word that my next move will be those private sector interests on Chalice.'
A chair squeaked as the Freerlander sat straighter, and a sigh issued from the hawk-nosed man wearing Caldlander harness who lounged opposite. After a black glance at the Freer, the Caldlander said, 'But I understood the take on Chalice was worthy of a raid? Is it not risky to be baiting an Alliance scoutship on site at a real operation?'
'Well, Godfrey,' drawled the man with the scarred hands, if that's what it takes to get me access to a documented Fleet vessel, there's the ticket to the party. My mate Gibsen'd find the heat more welcome than bus driving guild cargoes, there's certainty.'
The Caldlander made a disparaging sound through his nose; the Freer readjusted her cowl.
Both were cultural signs of displeasure, ignored by the skip-runner captain who stretched and rose, still in shadow. He half turned, scooped up a rattling collection of weapons belts and hiked them over his shoulder. Then he exposed blunt teeth in an expression that Freer and Cald both knew better than to mistake for a smile.
'Gentleman,' said MacKenzie James in his boyishly amiable fashion. 'Lady. If one of you kills the other after I leave, take my point, I'll gut the survivor like a fish.'
No sound answered but a whore's raucous laugh beyond the doorway.
'Good,' Mac James concluded. Still slinging the weapons he had, after all, never promised to return, he spun and ducked out, a large-framed bear of a man with a tread that incongruously made no sound. The door curtain slapped shut after him and left two enemies face-to-face over a wildly guttering candle.
'Damn his arrogance,' swore the Caldlander. His fist slapped irritably against the hip that now held neither knife, nor sheath, nor pistol.
The Freer expressed her frustration through silence and a twitch of steel-nailed fingers. She found
she had something to say after all. if it were only his arrogance, neither of us would have come here, nor agreed to run errands to benefit some snot-nosed boy lieutenant.'
The Caldlander stiffened fractionally. His eyes showed wide rings of white. 'You suspect the information on Chalice is a setup?'
The face under the cowl yielded nothing. 'The question is, does MacKenzie James?'
The enemies parted then, each wrapped in their own breed of silence. Days later, when Freer and captain were both beyond contact, it occurred to the Caldlander that Mac James's formidable cleverness might have fallen short. This once he might have overlooked the significance of a past action that had slagged a Freer ancestral memorial.
* * *
Sail emerged from the queer, deep silence of FTL on a routine run to deliver dispatches to Carsey Sector base. The capsule was relayed, another received to replace it, and in the six-sided capsule that served as cockpit, Harris snoozed in his headset, bored. Behind him, in the command alcove reserved for Lieutenant Jensen, Sail's third crew member slouched in the process of painting her nails. Sarah Ashley del Kaplin, called Kappie by her deckmates, was short, whip-thin, and full-lipped. She had inviting, dusky skin and a deep voice, and she had taken assignment on Sail knowing that the lieutenant was handsome, but an iceberg, and that Harris was a bum who pinched. The pinches she fielded with equanimity, until they got too personal to ignore. Harris received a bruise he swore happened in a shower that was gravity stabilized, and the iceberg lieutenant was left to his romance with the machinations of MacKenzie James.
'Why's his nibs not out here reading off new orders?' Kaplin mused, turning her wrist to admire her nails, which this round were metallic lavender.
'Huh,' muttered Harris. One elbow on the astrogation unit, he scratched his chest through his unsealed collar, then added, 'The lieutenant will return to duty when he's finished housekeeping his map tacks.'
A shout emerged from crew quarters, followed by what sounded like a war whoop. Harris shoved out of his slouch, and Kaplin swiveled around, her almond eyes wide with astonishment. 'Did I hear that? Could this mean we've been assigned leave for the next tour?'
Harris grunted again. 'Small chance. Jensen spends leave doing volunteer scut work for the recon boys.'
Kaplin's groan was interrupted by Jensen's explosive appearance at the companionway. His rangy frame filled up the narrow opening; lit by the overhead panel, his face was flushed and his eyes overbright with excitement.
'He's done it!' the lieutenant shouted, waving a recent message com. 'He's finally taken the bait.'
The 'he' needed no definition; nothing short of obsession with MacKenzie James could cause Jensen to overlook the crew member who usurped his command chair, the nail polish a calculated affront to his dignity.
From the pilot's station, Harris drawled, 'Let me guess. We're going to go AWOL, maybe pay an unscheduled visit to Chalice? At least I presume all those messages coming and going between us and the private sector were not over an affair.'
Kaplin watched this exchange, her nail brush forgotten in her hand, if our boy is even capable of an affair,' she muttered sotto voce.
Jensen failed to take umbrage as he crossed the cockpit in a stride. Risking an undecorous crease in his trousers, he leaned on the instrument panel cowling. This drew a frown from Harris, disregarded as the lieutenant plunged on. 'No. We go under regs, by the book. Sail's a scout and recon owes me a favor. Once we've placed these dispatches, I can get us an assignment to do a discretionary patrol sweep.
Since the mines on Chalice are the juiciest operation the military has going with private business, they'd naturally need to be checked.'
Harris raked his fingers through a rooster comb of red hair, then replaced his beret with its frayed Fleet insignia. 'That'd work.'
Only Kaplin insisted on particulars. 'What's at Chalice for us?'
Jensen let her sarcasm pass. 'Everything. I've been months setting it up. We're going to capture MacKenzie James and through him trace the home worlds of the Syndicate.'
Kaplin raised pencil-thin eyebrows. 'Oh? And what's in Chalice for MacKenzie?'
Smug now, Jensen smiled. 'A trap. My trap. James thinks he's going to heist core crystals, ones engineered with the technology used to interface those fancy brainship modules with their hardware. But once in, he'll find out the booty was bait. Sail might not have all the latest tracking gadgets, but she's strong on gunnery. We're going to stand down the Marity.''
The nail brush by now was thoroughly dry. Tossing it aside in exasperation, Kaplin flipped back ash-brown hair. 'You're crazy. You'll get us all court-martialed.'
'Or decorated,' Harris interjected. 'That's what happened last time.'
That moment Jensen noticed the gaudy, nonregulation nail lacquer. 'Ensign Kaplin,' he rapped out. 'One more breach of protocol on this bridge, and I'll have you confined to quarters.' His voice did not change inflection as he resumed with orders for his pilot. 'Harris, charge the coils and prepare for FTL. I want our dispatches delivered as if they were hot, and Sail on flight course for Chalice.'
* * *
In fact the logistics took days to work out. On fire with impatience lest they miss their timing at Chalice, Jensen paced through Sail's tiny corridors. He ran through his plan to trap Marity over and over again. Since the scoutship's living quarters consisted of two bunkrooms, a galley cubby, and the bridge, his crewmates grew sick of hearing it. Harris escaped by closeting himself in astrogation to watch his library of porn tapes. Kaplin got bugged enough to argue.
Her fingers tapped the mess counter as she voiced her list of objections. 'First, you took a helluva risk assuming those recon boys you brown-nosed could wrangle us an assignment.'
'Irrelevant point,' Jensen snapped. 'We've got our papers and the assignment, both on target.'
Kaplin shot a glance at the soup he would not eat because of nerves, and her next nail snicked against the counter. 'Second, the explosive you had that dock worker rig in case your plans went awry could misfire.'
Jensen gestured his exasperation. 'Not if you know, as the rest of Chalice personnel does, that the box with the self-destruct is a dummy. The crystals inside are fakes, a decoy for MacKenzie James.'
'Oh?' Kaplin's eyebrows arched. 'You told everybody about your plot? Even the janitors? Hell, man, if you left things that wide-open, your skip-runner's deaf not to know it. His intelligence network's better than Fleet's, if he's got connections with the Syndicate. So who's fooling who on this mission?'
'Mac's best style is recklessness,' Jensen countered. 'And he wants those interface crystals very badly.'
Kaplin threw up her hands, almost banging the dish locker in her irritation. 'You're telling me nothing but insanity! Our success depends on MacKenzie James being quantum leaps dumber than you are.'
Now Jensen grew heated in turn, if you can devise a better plan, I'd sure be interested to hear it!'
The lilac-colored nails drummed an agitated solo on the countertop. 'I can't,' Kaplin said finally. 'But God, we'll be lucky if our asses stay whole through this one.'
The queer, intangible stagger that human time sense underwent through the shift from FTL came to an end, but confusion lingered. On re-entry to analog space, Sail seemed to hesitate and bounce, as if she were a plane engaged in a turbulent landing. Then something moving and metallic impacted her high-density hull with an awful, ear-stinging clang.
'Jesus!' screamed Harris from the pilot's seat. 'We've dumped slap into a war zone!' He spun the spacecraft, tossing Kaplin and Jensen hard into their couch stations.
The lieutenant strained against the pull of vertigo and managed to punch up an image on the screens. Instantly his eyes were seared by the glare of an expanding plasma explosion. Sail had not entered a war zone; instead, the station logged as her destination had been detonated to a cloud of gases and debris. Harris responded, reflexively kicked Sail's grav drives into reverse with a scream of attitude thrusters. Small fragments rattled
against the hull. The gravity drives accelerated into the red, and buzzers sounded warning.
Jensen stared at the blowing burst of destruction that Harris labored feverishly to evade. What could possibly have gone wrong? he wondered, and his shoulders tensed in anticipation of Kaplin's acerbic, 'I told you so, you arrogant, stupid fool.'
But Kaplin said nothing, only sat with her face in her hands, caution lights from the recon unit a glare of yellow against her knuckles.
'Je-sus,' Harris repeated, the Eirish accent of his childhood breaking through the more cultured tones he had acquired in air-tactics academy. A gifted sixth sense and instinct enabled him to quiet the drive engines; Sail described a smooth course just beyond the event horizon left by the explosion. 'What now?'
Nobody spoke. None of the three in Sail's cockpit cared to contemplate what might have been had their scout probe broken through FTL just half an instant sooner. Jensen looked at his hands, found them clenched whitely on the arms of his crew chair. Since he could not change the fuckup, he forced his brain to work.
And the obvious stared him in the face.
'Kappie,' he said sharply. 'Engage sensors, sweep the vicinity for the presence of other warcraft.'
'What?' Overdue, the ensign's reproach was cutting. 'Have you gone nuts? You set a live charge on Chalice station, and now you're after the culprit who blew it?'
Lieutenant Jensen repeated his command, his voice back under control. 'The charge I had rigged was a contained net explosive. If anybody set it off, even accidentally, it might have burned one sector. Not the whole station. We're seeing the afterimage of a plasma bolt. Now, make your sweep. Our lives depend on it, because the enemy who manned the weapon is still out there.'