She turned to other subjects, starting with how long it would take the nicks to arrive when summoned, and ranging to the safety of the Kelly, how to deal with other Rifters on the station, the possibility of allies, and a host of other details.
But Marim tuned it out, anger cooling into a hard knot. They didn’t trust me, she thought. She’d been straight with them all ever since she joined the Dis gang, and they didn’t trust her. And they thought she was supposed to go on trusting them?
She tried to shake the resentment. She hated feeling angry, especially with crewmates. It never made things comfortable. Lokri saw her mood, of course, the way he always had. When Marim left the rec room, he came with her. “We’ve an hour before we need to be at our stations,” he said suggestively.
There’d been no sex after that first desperate watch following their escape. He’d slept for days. Marim brightened at the offer, and they spent the hour in a way satisfactory to both, but at the end, when she retreated to the shower, she could not escape the feeling that she’d been petted. Like you do to a brat Ivard’s age.
Finally their skiptime dwindled though its last hour. They gathered on the bridge, each taking their station, with feeds to Montrose in the dispensary and Jaim in the engine room.
“Emergence,” Ivard said, his voice barely louder than the muted bell signal.
Lokri looked around the familiar bridge, then up at the viewscreen, where a faint blue-white spark—almost a disc—was all that indicated the black hole binary of the Suneater. On another screen an asteroid glared in false colors printed by the computer. There were other rocks in this cluster, but they couldn’t be seen.
“Traces?” Vi’ya said.
“Nothing.”
They looked at the asteroid, a battered elllipsoid about three kilometers on its long axis. “Strange to think,” Sedry said, “that this war might be ended by throwing rocks.”
Ivard snickered.
“Lokri, send off that burst,” said Vi’ya.
Sedry and Lokri had prepared an databurst outlining Telvarna’s offer of assistance with just enough information to guarantee—as much as guarantees were possible with Dol’jharians—that their first contact would be peaceful. “They are looking for tempaths,” Vi’ya had said. “They will know of us, and they will not wish us blown away by an over-eager Rifter ally.” Lokri sent it with a jac-point jab of his forefinger.
Vi’ya said, “All right. We’ve been pushing it, getting the ship into shape. That’s why I chose to emerge a light-day out. We can assume they know of this rock cluster, but we don’t know if it’s transpondered or how often their patrols check it. We’ll be on double watches now, Ivard and me first. I suggest the rest of you grab what rest you can. Once they know we’re here, it’s impossible to predict what will happen.”
“Except we know it’ll be rasty,” Marim groused.
Vi’ya smiled. “Contemplate the reward.”
Marim groaned as she flounced off the bridge. “If we’re alive to use it,” she cracked in parting.
Lokri slaved his console to Vi’ya’s and got up to follow.
In the rec room, they discovered that Montrose had prepared a surprise meal. “We may as well use up the fresh stuff,” he said philosophically.
Sedry sank into a seat with a sigh. Her plate was loaded.
“Never eaten this good?” Marim asked, nudging her as she passed.
“Never,” Sedry said emphatically.
After a short time Lokri looked down at his plate, surprised at how much he’d eaten.
During the past few days he had not thought himself hungry, but when he smelled the food, he found that he had a ravenous appetite. Midway through his meal, he saw Montrose’s eyes on him, his approval obvious.
“Eat more, boy,” he grated. “You’ve got a long way to go yet.”
Lokri sighed. He still had nightmares. Not about his imprisonment, which—on the surface—had been humane enough, or about the trial and its aftermath. In the dreams he still wandered all over known space, fearing every new stop lest there be an unexpected ID check, or nicks searching for him. And he still saw every detail of his parents sprawled in death.
The worst was knowing that they had parted angry. He stared down into his drink, wondering if that wound would ever heal. Fierin had been a girl, of little interest to him fourteen years ago. Now she was a young woman, and though their meeting had been brief, both tired and stressed, he had seen much of himself in her.
Jaim lounged his way, his gaze unexpectedly searching. “Finish up,” he said. “And in an hour, meet me below.”
Lokri nodded. That was another part of the plan: to be ready for action. He’d had no stamina after they left Ares, but Jaim’s workouts, short and slow at first, had had an effect. He was rapidly regaining his muscle tone and speed.
He finished up his food, listening with half his attention to Marim’s ready stream of jokes, cracks, and outrageous statements.
Running through all her old favorites for a new audience, Lokri thought as he got to his feet and jammed his plate into the recycler.
But the laugh was from Montrose, not Sedry. This jarred at him off and on through his practice session, and through the rest of the day, as he worked with Sedry trying to learn the tenno battle glyphs that Markham had installed a year ago, plus the Warrigal semiotics she had added.
It wasn’t until he was falling into his bunk that the anomaly linked up with some other half-observed oddities, producing a surprising conclusion: Marim wasn’t, in fact, exerting herself to entertain the new crewmate. If anything, she ignored her.
She had her jacs trained on the rest of the crew.
His half-closed eyes burned open, and he threw off his covers and pulled his trousers on again. He was about to go out in search of her when the door hissed open, and Marim sauntered in, yawning hugely.
“What the chatzing hell are you up to?” he demanded.
“Huh?” she paused in the act of knuckling her eyes.
“Don’t give me that nullwit look. I may have been half-asleep the last week or so but I’m waking up now. I know you, Marim,” he said, “and whenever you play the clown with the rest of us you’re up to something.”
“Why the bunny for the first time in ages, all of a sudden?” she retorted as she flung her clothes off and dropped onto her bunk. “You’re an idiot, Jesimar,” she said snidely, her sharp little teeth showing.
He wasn’t going to be sidetracked. “So are you, Marimeth Eleu-Fim.”
Her chin jerked up, the nearly faded bruises on her face looking like blotches from some strange disease. “All right. Shut up about my past and I’ll shut up about yours. I’m just trying to have a good time before Vi’ya gets us killed.”
“If you thought there was no chance, you would have sabotaged this run from the outset,” he said, thinking fast—knowing he was right. “What is it?”
Her eyes flickered at that. “Nothing,” she said again. “Just . . . ideas on gettin’ information, and maybe how to use it. Just like she’s ordered Sedry—and Jaim too. Only I’ll do it my own way.”
“You better remember,” Lokri said, “these are Dol’jharians. They don’t have senses of humor, they don’t have patience, but they do have machines that will suck your brain out through your anus, and take a week to do it.”
“As if I’d be stupid enough to run scam on Dol’jharians,” Marim scoffed. She flung herself under her covers and turned over, so all he saw was the rounded mound of her hip, and above the covers, her riot of curly yellow hair. “But there are also Rifters,” she said to the bulkhead in her airiest voice. And, “You can stop treating me like I’m stupid.”
Lokri sighed.
Twenty-four hours later, they reported to the bridge, Vi’ya having figured on an immediate response once their pulse was received at the Suneater.
They didn’t wait long.
“Emergence pulse,” Ivard exclaimed, and everyone’s heartbeat accelerated.
Vi�
�ya slapped the go-pad and the fiveskip blipped, taking them out of range of any possible weapons. When the emergence pulse again reached their new position, Ivard’s fingers danced over his keys. “Destroyer—signature match—it’s the Satansclaw.
“Here we go,” Marim muttered.
“Ivard, take us in to eight light seconds, 180 from the skipmissile tube.” That would keep Telvarna safe from the destroyer’s main weapon.
Ivard keyed his console again. The fiveskip burped. “Satansclaw plus 8.1 light seconds.”
“Satansclaw?” Vi’ya repeated. She had not permitted herself to hope that she would know whoever was sent to meet her. “Tallis Y’Marlor,” she breathed.
“If he’s still alive,” Montrose rumbled. “He was always one for skulking behind the action. Dol’jhar might have replaced him early on—he never would have survived fighting the Navy.”
Vi’ya poised her hand over the skip pad until Ivard reported, “Scan shows 180-degree orientation,” said Ivard. He paused. “No rotation detected.”
“Barrodah has apparently ordered a peaceable approach, whatever they might wish,” Vi’ya said calmly.
Ivard concentrated on his console, watching for any attempt on Satansclaw’s part to bring their main weapon to bear.
“Message incoming,” Lokri reported about ten seconds later, his voice languid. “Onscreen.”
The older members of the crew all recognized the tall, dark-haired man, who now sported an eye patch. He wore a gaudy, tightly-fitted uniform of no recognizable affiliation. Marim wondered if the eye patch was an affectation.
“Satansclaw to Telvarna, this is Captain Tallis Y’Marmor of the Karroo Syndicate. You are to approach within one light second to these coordinates.” Ivard’s console blurbled momentarily. “I will establish a hyperwave connection via my ship to Barrodagh.”
A light flickered on Lokri’s console and he nodded at Vi’ya, who said, “Acknowledged.” She glanced at Sedry, active at her console.
“Yeah, right,” said Marim acidly. “One sec from a destroyer, even one run by that nullwit Tallis. Why don’t we just skip into the singularity and get it over with.”
“That will put us right behind the Satansclaw’s radiants, where it is most vulnerable,” said Sedry. “And, given the naval data on Satansclaw, they’ve nothing covering that bearing that could punch through our shields before we could skip, so it’s also where we are least vulnerable.”
“Ivard, set your console to Sedry’s feed, for skip on missile traces,” said Vi’ya. “Sedry, be ready to fire on my command.”
As soon as the Satansclaw emerged, Sedry had called up the tenno battle glyphs. She hunched over her console, hands poised above the keys. Fire Control was new to her, but combining dataspace with commands was old; after a week of sim-practice, she felt as ready as she would ever be.
She gritted her teeth. Now, instead of annihilating data structures, she might be annihilating human beings. At least the enemy would be Dol’jharians, or the Rifters who had allied willingly with them; she would never rid herself of the stain of the blood of those she’d sworn to protect who were killed at Arthelion.
Vi’ya spoke a command, and they felt the internal tug of skip.
“One light second, relative velocity 1.5 kiloclicks 180 from Satanscalw,” Ivard said.
“Incoming,” Lokri added, sitting up straight. He hit the control and once again they all looked expectantly at the screen.
Tallis Y’Marmor appeared, looking slightly annoyed. Around him, his bridge crew sat stone-faced as he said, “I’m patching you through to serach Barrodagh’s hyperwave channel.” The screen blanked.
Lokri’s console began to chitter quietly as the Telvarna’s encryption systems negotiated with the Dol’jharian channel. He grinned. “In other words, Barrodagh won’t let him listen in.”
By the way that Marim crowed and Ivard snickered, Sedry suspected this crew had had some kind of dealings in the past with Y’Marmor. She’d ask Montrose later.
The screen flickered, and a narrow face appeared, dark eyes studying them sourly. Behind Barrodagh was an uninformative gray background.
As he and Vi’ya began their dickering, Sedry ran her hands lightly over her keys. It felt odd to sit at the console where the now-Panarch had sat not so long ago, and fired on Eusabian’s flagship. Alt L’Ranja gehaidin! was the code to activate the tenno, some kind of motto and apparently a private joke between Markham, the previous captain, and Brandon as a young krysarch.
Vi’ya had told Sedry that she could recode it, but she had chosen not to. She’d rather adapt to their lives. She wanted nothing more than to forget her past and to make a new identity. And it had pleased her inordinately to discover that this was a normal aspect of the Riftskip: that most people came to it leaving behind an entire life. No one had asked her any questions at all.
The big screen flickered as Barrodagh vanished and an image of Tallis bounced into place.
“Is it settled?” he asked.
“It is,” Vi’ya replied.
Tallis nodded, his fingers making finicky movements on the arm of his captain’s pod. “Welcome to the fleet. Before you make your last approach, I would like to invite you aboard my ship for a conference. There is much information we could profitably share, and I believe I can entertain you tolerably well.”
Vi’ya hesitated fractionally. “I accept.”
“I shall send a barge,” Tallis said grandly.
Vi’ya acknowledged, then terminated the transmission.
“Barrodagh wants me, so he won’t play any tricks,” Vi’ya said. “And this is Tallis, after all. Maybe I can find something out that will help us.”
“I want to go,” Marim said. “I’ll find out whatever you want.”
Vi’ya shook her head. “Jaim only. I want to look as formidable as I can.” She smiled grimly. “If he’s survived this long in Dol’jhar’s employ then he has learned something. You can be sure that he will be prying at me for whatever he can get, and they will all be watching for any sign of weakness.”
Aboard the Satansclaw, Tallis inspected the dining room and ordered a slub to wash down the bulkheads. Again. Everything still seemed greasy after Anderic had nearly killed his crew fighting the logos.
Tallis sniffed delicately. Sometimes he could almost fancy he smelled traces of the disposer backup that had almost washed him out of Recycling on a tide of excreta. He hoped it was an artifact of memory. It would not do to have that Dol’jharian woman come aboard and smell bilge.
He wished he’d thought to tell her to leave those little brainburners behind. Ought he to have a mind-blur running, in addition to the Negus extract he had taken to blunt his emotions? No, it would look weak. He’d rely on the drugs.
He’d met Vi’ya once or twice at Rifthaven. She’d been a second then, standing silently behind their yellow-haired, renegade nick captain as they dickered with the Karroo merchants. Would she have any aesthetic appreciation for his ship, or would she act the brute like those nullwit Tarkans on Arthelion?
After hovering in uncertainty, he decided to meet the barge. He wouldn’t lose prestige, really. After all, he had invited her. And maybe they’d get to some real talk the faster.
He stood outside the lock, with Kira Lennart at his side. As a second, Lennart was reliable—unfortunately she was also his rival for Luri’s affections. Luri. Tallis winced, hoping Luri would not decide to make an appearance and ruin everything with her flirting.
The shuttle landed in the bay, and the ramp came down. Two tall figures descended, one in black, the other in gray. Tallis let out a slow breath of relief. No brainburners. But he had forgotten how tall she was; her eye level was slightly above his, forcing him to lift his chin in order to meet her slanted black gaze.
Her eyes really were black—he remembered her tempathy and looked away quickly, gesturing a welcome with one of those aristocratic Douloi modes. He had practiced it in his cabin, and thought it added the right suggestion of a bl
end of refined tastes and command.
“Welcome aboard, Captain,” he said. “I took the liberty of having a meal prepared. I’ve equipped my galley with a cook from the Apanaush school on Rifthaven—” As he spoke, he remembered belatedly that her own physician was a Golgol chef, and winced. “This way,” he said hastily, glaring at Lennart, who didn’t quite hide a smirk. Damn her—of course she knew that, too.
He led the way up through the ship, feeling that this, at least, would compare favorably to what must be cramped quarters aboard that little Columbiad. His first order when he had regained his ship had been to put everyone to work scrubbing. Not just to restore things to the proper state of cleanliness that his fastidious senses demanded, but to underscore that he was in command.
That reminded him of the logos, still lurking in the system. It seemed under control; he couldn’t find the handbook anywhere, so he couldn’t run the diagnostics. But he’d find a way to remove it, even if he had to go to Barca and pay again.
When they reached the dining room he dismissed Lennart, using the words and gestures he had prepared. She gave him one cold look and left, her resentment obvious.
The Dol’jharian did not seem to notice; at least there was no expression whatever on that smooth face. She was much younger than he’d assumed, he noted with surprise as she sat where he indicated, and accepted wine. The tall, long-faced man in gray stood behind her chair, his stance characteristic of an Ulanshu master, powerful even when still.
Vi’ya also reflected that stillness, indicating that she could take care of herself, and Tallis fretted inwardly, wondering if he had lost prestige by not having a bodyguard. Casting his mind wildly over his crew as he sipped his wine, he wondered who could even remotely affect that kind of stance? Fourth-level Ulanshu, it’s got to be, he thought. Why hadn’t he stayed with it—or found someone who had?
The steward served the food, and for a time they talked of Rifthaven. Vi’ya seemed interested in this topic, so Tallis brought her up on the latest news—as if he’d had liberty with the others and hadn’t been stuck in the bilge. There was no way for her to know that, he assured himself. At the same time he tried to underscore—delicately—that she was behind the times because she herself had been a prisoner.
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