The City and the Ship

by Anne McCaffrey

  "It's fantastic, man! If they ever went straight they could make a fortune designing security for rich guys."

  He'd recited the security codes and their answers so that Rand could record them. And Rand had made up a program that would answer the question asked, regardless of the order in which the codes were presented.

  "Security's pretty light on the decks the mercs use," Kraig had told them. "I mean who's going to be stupid enough to sneak . . ." He'd blinked at them. "Hey, I din't mean anything." He'd apologized for several minutes before they could convince him they weren't offended.

  * * *

  Joseph dubiously eyed the large ball of ice Joat held ready in front of the lock.

  "This is your secret weapon?"

  "Yup."

  "A snowball?"

  She chuckled. "The ice is imbedded with approximately ten thousand transmitter/receivers which will be dispersed at a controlled rate determined by the speed at which the snowball is traveling. We're going to push it right through Kolnari space and mess up their communications big time."

  "They will blow it up, Joat."

  "And if they do, some of the t/rs will be destroyed. The rest will be in a good position to do what they're designed for. It'll work, Joe. Trust me." She looked up at his scowling face. "Seg was really impressed."

  He grunted and opened the lock.

  Joat shoved her burden through the open hatch and Joseph closed it again. Then she picked up a control plaque and pressed the firing stud. The rocket ignited and her faux comet was off.

  "You really like that alien, do you not?" Joseph asked as he strapped himself back into his seat.

  "Yeah. He's a nice kid."

  "He is a tactless, interfering busybody."

  "But basically a sweetie."

  "He is hideous to look upon and he is a fool."

  "I knew you liked him."

  Joseph growled. "It is hard not to. He is so much like a happy, bouncy little puppy."

  They were silent a while, monitoring the discreet Kolnari signals. Kraig had warned them to linger just outside the Kolnar security perimeter and wait to be recognized.

  Joat did and didn't mind.

  The waiting was hard, largely because her excellent imagination kept conjuring possible disaster scenarios. Kraig might have left out something vital, or they might be given close escort to Belazir's ship. In which case they were sunk. The success of the whole plan depended on their being handled like a friendly.

  Yet the longer they sat here, the more time her "snowball" had to do its work.

  Suddenly there was a flurry of questions from the Kolnari. Rand's program answered as designed and they were given leave to proceed.

  "Welcome back, Rendino du Pare," a woman's voice said.

  "Thanks," Joseph muttered, "out."

  "I hope that's not his girlfriend," Joat said.

  "I would not worry," Joseph said quietly. "I am sure the Kolnar do not encourage chatter in their space."

  They proceeded quietly on their way, watching the distant Kolnari fleet loom larger as they approached.

  "Joat, may I ask you a question?"

  "Sure."

  "Your ship, the Wyal, what does its name mean? I have tried to find a reference to it everywhere that I can think of; without success. And knowing you, I am sure it has some significance."

  "It's an acronym," she said with a grin. "Does that help?"

  "Are you going to tell me or not?"

  "It means While You Ain't Lookin'."

  Joseph laughed silently. "Appropriate. It is pleasant to know that creeping respectability has not entirely obliterated the feral child I knew and loved."

  * * *

  They're not all watching me, Joat told herself. This is normal. And this is the end of a normal mission. Lights on the floor and ceiling guided her to a berth. She parked neatly and powered down. The hangar was cramped, nothing like the cavernous hold of an assault carrier. It was a little unusual for a ship of this displacement to carry fighters at all, but she supposed it was useful when you didn't have an elaborate military organization with specialized vessels. The tips of the fighter's weapons pods just barely cleared those of the other three; there was one empty berth—that would be the one Soamosa had taken—and a scurry of crew and robots, doing maintenance work.

  No, they're arming up and fueling. Somebody's suspicious. Oh, joy.

  "They're going to be expecting only one person to disembark," she said nervously.

  "Kraig told you that security was light in the mercenaries' section, almost casual. My advice is to disembark with me, acting like you belong here. I doubt anyone will look twice, or bother to question us. As I said before, I am much more nervous about the paint on our suits."

  "Don't worry," she said, "we'll shed them as fast as we can." They do have a kinda orange undercast.

  Joat wondered if the suited figures servicing the fighters around them were mercenaries or Kolnar slaves. Either way, Joe was probably right. The ones who knew how many people should be returning from this mission sure as blazes weren't working on this deck. She grasped the strap on her black shoulder bag and followed Joseph across the floor to the locker area.

  Joseph was keying in Kraig's locker combination when a message came through his suit's receiver.

  "Rendino du Pare, you are to report to Captain Hobsbrowm for debriefing at fourteen hundred hours. Room C-780."

  "Acknowledged, out."

  Joseph finished the unlock code and pulled open the door. Then he took off his helmet and spoke to Joat.

  "Now we know how much time we have. I am to meet with my debriefer at fourteen hundred."

  Joat was already half out of her suit.

  "It's twelve hundred now. They're not too eager to talk to you, are they?"

  There were two uniforms in the locker, Joseph proceeded to put both on.

  "It works to our advantage, of course. But I wonder what is going on."

  Joat brushed her hair smooth and retted it in a ponytail.

  "If we're lucky," she said, "Belazir's asleep and no one wants to wake him. If we're not . . . then he's with Bros."

  "Or he is in conference with his captains, or working out, or just generally busy. Let us not worry about how Belazir is occupied until we must conclude otherwise."

  "Joe," she said as she stuffed her suit into Kraig's locker beside his, "you're being reasonable. I really, really hate it when I'm being hysterically pessimistic and people insist on being reasonable."

  "I shall try not to restrain myself," he promised with a smile.

  "Well, all right," she said, "see that you don't." Joat looked him over, straightening his collar.

  "Okay. Let's do it."

  * * *

  The Kolnari had sealed a number of the access panels into the repair tunnel that ran between corridors C and B, no doubt for security reasons. The remaining few were carefully locked.

  Joat pulled Sperin's override gizmo out of her shoulder bag and set it against the lock mechanism. It hadn't taken her long to figure it out. The thing was designed to be simple to use and she had a natural affinity for mechanical objects.

  Still, she was nervous and her hands were slick with sweat. Even with Joseph's beefy body partially shielding her from view she felt conspicuous.

  The fact that they'd sealed so many panels made her believe those that weren't sealed were under observation. That "everybody's watching you and they don't like what they see" feeling was raising chills up and down her spine.

  The lock clicked open and she slipped through, half expecting to be met by a snarling crowd of armed Kolnari. What are you doing here? Hands up! Behind your head! On your knees! March!

  There was no one there. She breathed a soft sigh of relief.

  "How I wish we could use one of your little scramblers, Joat," Joseph murmured nostalgically. "I would feel so much more secure."

  "You and me both," she said, smiling. "But they're just as likely to set off alarms these days as to get yo
u by them."

  They backtracked until they found the access panel they wanted. One that was located quite close to the Kolnari Brig. Predictably it was welded shut.

  Joat pulled a roll of what looked like putty from her bag and began to stick it around the seam of the panel. When she was through she stuck a suction cup with a handle attached onto the center of the panel and pulled on it to test its grasp.

  Then she and Joseph drew their sidearms and after carefully regulating the laser's temperature they melted the coil of heat activated acid they'd drawn around the seam. Slowly at first, and then more quickly, it liquefied and began to eat its way through the welds. Joat exerted a gentle outward pressure on the suction cup. What fumes there were stayed with them in the narrow tunnel, unpleasant, but nontoxic. For the most part. Kolnari would probably hardly notice them. A small alarm she'd built into her coverall was complaining about the Dreadful Bride's toxic atmosphere in increasingly insistent tones anyway. She reached up and turned it off. I know already!

  As the panel came free, Joseph reached out to support Joat's hand and they lifted it slightly, but held it in place, not quite touching the frame it had once joined.

  They listened tensely for sounds of voices or people walking by and were rewarded by silence.

  Cautiously they lifted the panel outward and stepped into the deserted corridor. Then they fitted it back into place, reset their lasers and proceeded to the Brig.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The woman behind the Brig's reception desk was a heavy-worlder, no question. Her bones had been genetically altered for thickness and her height was somewhat below human norm. But her expression was curious, and relatively friendly.

  "Yeah?" she asked. "Help you?"

  "We're here to see a Mr. Bros Sperin," Joat purred.

  Beside her Joseph stood impassively, eyes front, hands clutched behind his back in an automatic parade rest. Just so much muscle, ready to spring into action.

  "Yeah? What for?"

  Joat raised one brow.

  "We have a specialty," she said smiling slightly.

  "Oh?"

  "Conversation. People can't seem to resist talking to us."

  The woman chuckled evilly.

  "Oh, yeah, I heard about that. I been expecting somebody like you. The Big Black Baddies tried with one of their creepy little medics and got nowhere. You'll have to leave your guns, though," she said.

  Joat pursed her lips. "I don't mind leaving mine here, but I'd rather my companion kept his. Sperin is reputed to be an . . . educated man. I'd like to know he has a weapon pointed at him."

  The woman was shaking her head and her expression was a lot less friendly.

  "Or perhaps," Joat continued, "he could surrender it to the guard on Sperin's door." She arched a brow. "I assume there is a guard on his door?"

  "Unh hunh. Let me see your ID."

  A little hole appeared in the center of the woman's forehead and intelligence ran out of her eyes as though escaping through it in a narrow wisp of steam.

  Joseph shook his hand, scorched by the backrush of burning gases where the laser had burned its way through the holster. A scorched smell insinuated itself through the sour chemical stink of Kolnar-normal atmosphere.

  "I did not want to do that," he said ruefully.

  Joat frowned. She didn't like killing, didn't like the waste. And like Joseph she hadn't wanted to see this almost-friendly hired killer die.

  "It couldn't be helped," she said grimly. "We don't have ID."

  When at last they'd taken the deliriously happy Kraig out of his suit, they'd checked his ID thoroughly. It was entirely too complex to duplicate with the equipment they had. And as time was a factor, they'd decided to go without.

  They arranged the mercenary's body so that it was turned slightly away from the entryway, hiding the hole in its . . . her head. Even the single second gained by the small deception might count.

  "Let me get to work."

  Joat went down on one knee behind the control console. Ah . . . dedicated system, just like Kraig said. That was safer, in a warship subject to viral attack; a worm program could be stopped by a series of specialized interfaces, and it also made damage control in combat easier. The down side was that none of the subsystems was as capable as one big one, and data transfer was slower.

  "This will take a second."

  She eased one of her tools out from behind the belt of her mercenary uniform and set to work, whistling silently between her teeth. Ah, not too unusual. The Kolnar had been savages before the High Clan left their planet—although it was a peculiar type of savagery, you could mine raw metallic plutonium there with picks and shovels, they'd had nuclear-powered steamboats. The basic technology of the space-going Kolnari clans was copied from Central Worlds-derived models.

  "Here." She snipped a fiber-optic line and spliced it into a converter, then plugged a datahedron into the optico-magnetic device. The screen before the dead woman cleared and began to show an uneventful corridor.

  "There. That ought to keep the surveillance systems out of our hair, until someone notices the repeating pattern."

  The main doors to the prison recognized them, routing though the intercept she'd placed on the computer. They proceeded through them as calmly as possible. The computer had indicated which of the cells was Sperin's and they moved confidently down the corridors.

  There was a Kolnari standing guard outside the cell and Joat could feel Joseph going into high gear.

  The guard showed no sign at all that he was aware of their approach. His posture had the relaxed alertness of a hunting beast.

  Arrogant jerk! Joat thought. Probably thinks there's no need to get excited about two scumvermin mercs. Oh baby, are you in for a surprise.

  "We are here to question the prisoner," she said, crisply, but with deference.

  The Kolnari stared at the opposite wall, as though thinking deep thoughts that couldn't be disturbed.

  After a full minute had elapsed Joseph said quietly, "We are here at the Great Lord's orders."

  That got a reaction. The body remained rigidly in place, but a brass-yellow eye glanced in their direction. After a brief pause the guard spoke.

  "I have received no orders that the prisoner is to be allowed visitors."

  Then he returned to deep thought mode.

  "Obviously the Great Lord has been detained," Joat observed, looking at Joseph.

  "We will wait," he said grimly.

  Joseph and the Kolnari stood like statues in contrasting colors, but after a few moments Joat began to pace.

  She walked back and forth, spinning on her heel every four paces. Then she began to whistle through her teeth while clapping her hands before her and then behind her back.

  Her fidgeting annoyed the guard. A very small wrinkle appeared between his brows. The equivalent of a full blown tantrum in any other people; he turned towards her, lips peeling back from his teeth.

  Joseph's laser took him in the back of the skull, and the Kolnari collapsed, falling stiffly, like a giant tree.

  Joe caught him before he hit the floor and Joat snatched the key from his utility belt. She aimed it at the door and it slid open obediently. Then she grabbed the Kolnari's feet and helped Joseph pull him into the cell.

  Bros stood with his feet braced, swaying. He watched them enter with no reaction whatsoever, like a man viewing a holoshow.

  Joat couldn't suppress an exclamation at her first good look at him. He was covered with burns. Some no more than reddened patches, but large areas were blistered and bleeding plasma. His face was slack with exhaustion, shadowed by his beard, his reddened eyes sunken in deep blue circles. He smelled awful; of infection and stale sweat and charred flesh.

  Joseph's hand came over her shoulder, offering the shirt he'd just taken off and she jumped.

  "Yeah," she said, as if Joseph had spoken. "Bros, you've got to put this on," she said clearly and calmly.

  She took hold of one hand and slid the sleeve
of the black shirt over it, ignoring the oozing wounds. He made a sudden sound of agony and began to struggle. Coaxing him to cooperate, she slid the other sleeve up and over his shoulder. Awareness flickered back into his eyes.

  "Joat," Bros said, his voice hoarse, his breathing harsh. "I've been having this dream that you'd come for me since yesterday. But this is the first time you've worn something so sexy. Does it mean something?" he leered.

  Good grief! Joat thought. There's resilience for you.

  "I think it means your subconscious really, really wants you to get out of here. So why don't you just relax and go along with it?"

  Fortunately the trousers were quite loose and slid over his boots with little trouble. Bros lost his balance at one point and started to fall, but Joe caught him. Blisters broke under Joseph's big hands and Bros gasped and cursed, but the pain seemed to make him more aware.

  "Can you walk?" Joat asked anxiously.

  "You're really here," he said and touched her face gently.

  "Can you walk?" she repeated.

  "Anything you can do I can do better," he quipped.

  "If I'd known you were going to take that attitude I wouldn't have come," she grumbled.

  He leaned forward.

  "Give me a kiss, Joat, and I'll follow you anywhere."

  Joat frowned and glanced at Joseph who nodded impatiently. She kissed Bros's lips gently, then smiled. Like you'd have stayed with Belazir if I'd said no. Bros, you've got style even when you're nuts with pain and fatigue.

  "C'mon," she said.

  They retraced their steps; Joat let the signal disrupting transmitter/receivers trickle from her pockets in their wake; Bros was stumbling forward in defiance of gravity, Joseph hovering nervously behind, ready to catch him if he fell.

  When they reached the locker room Joat broke into the locker next to Kraig's with Sperin's lock pick and pulled out the suit it contained.

  Then, she and Joseph stripped Bros of the mercenary uniform and shoved him into it without regard to his wounds.

  Forgive me, Bros, Joat thought, there's no time to go easy on you.

  She and Joseph hurried into their own suits, hearts pounding, waiting for an alarm klaxon to sound, waiting for discovery.