Liaden Universe 20: The Gathering Edge

by Sharon Lee

  “Best to make sure there’s no misunderstandings,” Clarence said. “Just in case they don’t follow the same pattern as before.”

  “Agreed,” Win Ton said.

  “Shielding increased,” Bechimo said.

  * * * * *

  “What you need to know,” Theo said slowly, “is that you can’t know everything about us. This ship, this crew—we’re unique. We hold secrets, because everyone holds secrets. For instance…” She looked from Chernak to Stost.

  “For instance,” she said again, “you each brought a case aboard my ship. While you willingly relinquished your clothes and your weapons, you kept those cases and hid them.”

  She glanced to Joyita, who gave her a wry smile and a shrug.

  “Because we asked you to relinquish your weapons, we assume that the contents of those cases is something…other…than weapons. We make that assumption because you are honorable people. We do not, even now, ask what is in those cases, because we are civilized people and know that everyone holds secrets. We trust that you have not endangered us with yours.”

  She paused for a sip of juice and looked at Kara, who was watching her closely, her face smooth and calm.

  “Continuing on that same course, we don’t intend to endanger you with our secrets. Luck—” she stopped herself, just, from wrinkling her nose and made a mental note to ask Anthora, the next time they met, if it was possible to get rid of Korval’s so-called luck.

  “Luck brought us together, and we intend, frankly, that you won’t be long among us. You have your mission and we—I won’t hide from you; I can’t hide from you!—that we’re an odd ship. We’re also a dangerous ship to be associated with. You don’t want our secrets. I would guess that your own are dangerous enough.”

  She paused and placed her right hand over her heart, looking from Kara to Chernak, to Stost, to Joyita.

  “I certify, on my honor as captain, that the ship Bechimo is not a Great Work. The ship has provenance. We know who financed her construction; we know her birth yard and the date that she was put out to space.”

  She lowered her hand.

  “Does this satisfy?”

  Chernak saluted, and Stost did.

  “Captain, your oath puts our concerns to rest.”

  That might or might not be true, Theo thought. But as long as they all remained civilized and pretended that no one was concerned or afraid, they ought to get through this next stage without anyone taking harm.

  “As for the crew—” She shook her head and turned her hands palm up.

  “You know some of our minor secrets. For instance, you surely know that I’m a so-called nexus of violence, because Clarence doesn’t miss a chance to tell that story. But you don’t know who Clarence was before he came to sit second on this ship.

  “You know that Win Ton is, like you, an explorer of the starways. You do not know what brought him to this ship—and you don’t need to know.

  “Nor do you need to know how Kara landed on this deck, or all the ports Hevelin has seen in a long life of travel.”

  “Captain,” Chernak said, saluting again.

  “One secret that we can share,” Joyita said, “is the secret of my nature. I am not the ship; I am, in fact, the comm officer. I am…an experiment. I also have provenance; I know who is responsible for my being present on this ship. The captain and crew share this information.”

  He paused and looked at Theo, who reminded herself that Joyita’s judgment was sound—most of the time, even when she didn’t know what he had in mind—and signed for him to continue.

  “Thank you, Captain. I am, as I said, an experiment: Can a fully aware, unique logical system become, let us say, human? I have bent every effort to not only learning to be an individual, but to appear as a human to humans. I’d thought—” Here he looked wryly at Chernak.

  “I thought that I was progressing well, but obviously, I made errors. Errors that endangered the crew, the ship, and the pathfinders. I would ask, with the captain’s permission, that the pathfinders, who are, after all, trained observers, be allowed to assist me by pointing out my errors and by suggesting ways in which I might improve myself.”

  “I have no objection,” the captain said, “if the pathfinders are able and willing to assist you.”

  Chernak and Stost exchanged a glance. It was Chernak who spoke.

  “Captain, we would be pleased to assist you—and Joyita—in this experiment. We must point out, however, that illusion goes only so far. If there is no tower, nor comm officer inside it…”

  “Agreed,” Joyita said crisply. “I am working on solutions at those fronts.”

  Was he? Theo thought. That was…interesting.

  “Are we agreed, then?” she asked the circle at large. “The pathfinders will study, and assist Joyita as they may. The ship and crew will do what the ship and crew does. We will enjoy the comradeship of the pathfinders and Grakow, while they are with us, but we all agree that we will be parting ways in a very short time.”

  “How short a time,” Chernak asked, “Captain?”

  “As soon as we can find you a safe harbor. We’re compiling options and will present them to you within the next four shifts.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Chernak said and looked to Stost.

  “We will increase our study shifts to battle prep status.”

  “Don’t endanger yourselves,” Captain Waitley warned.

  “No, Captain,” Chernak said. “This is a known protocol. We will take proper precautions so that we are fit and alert when it comes time to debark and forward our mission.”

  “Excellent. This work session is finished. The circle may open.”

  She stood, bent to offer Kara a hand, and helped her to her feet.

  “Thank you,” Kara said, bending down in turn to pick up Hevelin and bring him to her shoulder.

  “We leave you now to your studies and the discussion of your duties,” Theo said to the pathfinders. Both saluted.

  * * * * *

  “Joyita sets himself up as a shield for Bechimo,” Win Ton murmured. “There is only one self-aware logic present…and he is not the ship.”

  “Joyita is in no danger,” Bechimo stated.

  “That’s right,” Clarence said comfortably. “Good piece of fancy dancing, on the part of the comm tech and the captain.”

  “Did it sound to you as if Theo will be moving very soon?” asked Win Ton.

  “It did. But if we wait a couple minutes, we can ask her.”

  The door to the bridge opened with a snap and Theo strode in, Kara and Hevelin some paces behind her.

  “Crew meeting,” she said, sounding tired and snappish and nervy. She ran her hands through her hair.

  “Wait,” she said. “First, I felt something—almost like Jump flare—when I was in the meeting. Do we have visitors?”

  Felt something? Clarence thought, but did not ask, given her current testy nature. Win Ton was already answering the captain’s question, his face full Liaden and smooth.

  “We entertained a visitor very briefly, Captain. Bechimo IDs as a vessel he has met in this space before, which is known to be of a retiring nature. Shielding has been increased, as a precaution only.”

  “Good,” she said briefly. “Bechimo?”

  “I believe that we are in no danger from that ship, Captain. The last time we sighted each other, it was quick to hide.”

  “Good,” she said again.

  “Want your chair back, Captain?” Clarence asked.

  “No,” she said, moving over to the observer’s station and pulling out the stool. “You keep the chair and the watch. This shouldn’t take long.”

  He nodded and ostentatiously gave his attention to the screens, while she closed her eyes and did some deep breathing and, probably, a quick calming dance inside her head.

  Felt that ship come in-system, had she? That bonding had gone deeper than he’d hoped, and for a moment he imagined he was facing Daav yos’Phelium and trying to explain
what it was that Clarence O’Berin had let his daughter run her head into. By his reckoning, he’d already cost Daav a wife—though Daav never did seem to reckon it that way. If he was going to cost the man a daughter, too…

  “All right,” Theo said, from her perch on the observer’s stool. “We just had a situation that could’ve gone bad real fast, except for Kara’s quick thinking and Hevelin’s intervention. We’ve got an agreement based on mutual self-interest in force right now, but the reality is that we’re going to have to part from the pathfinders sooner, rather than later. Bechimo has generated an annotated list of our four top ports. You should each have that information on your screens. We’ll meet again here in six ship-hours to make a final decision for our first port of call, and following, we’ll Jump out as soon as is practicable.

  “Questions?”

  “Captain, we have not done the final inspection of Spiral Dance with the pathfinders,” Win Ton said.

  Theo sighed.

  “I don’t think mutual self-interest extends that far. Bechimo and Joyita have been over it, and nothing scans dangerous. You and Kara have done a hands-on inspect and didn’t find anything dangerous. Unless I hear an objection, we’ll assume that Pilot yos’Phelium locked her ship down proper before she set it on its way. I’ll entertain further discussion of that at our meeting in six hours. Other questions?”

  There were none.

  “Good, then. Kara, you’re off-shift. Clarence—”

  “All respect, Captain,” Clarence said, “Clarence is on-shift and Win Ton is off.”

  “With all respect,” Win Ton murmured, “I am perfectly able to continue the shift, after a brief tea break.”

  Theo opened her mouth, closed it and, after a long moment, actually produced a grin.

  “That’s mutiny,” she said. “But I’ll let it go this time. C’mon, Kara, we’re both off-shift.”

  A ship in the Jump configuration preferred by most starfaring groups neither comes nor goes. If the Jump is not calculated properly, the ship stays where it is within the frame of previous motions. If the Jump is calculated exactly, the ship’s energy and contents become one, contracting dimensionally, and the ship and its force packet vibrate their way into a crystalline state that adjusts space around it. The goal is to achieve an energy level meant to match that of a “place”—a star system, a nebula, a rendezvous point—where the matched energy levels permit the ship to reappear in normal space. Transferring from place to place in this way requires minimal energy once the Struven units stress the base ship-and-energy packet into a unit; space rearranges itself around the packet until the ship emerges—or occasionally fails to emerge—at the target location.

  The energy of the underfields is not the same as in so-called “real space”—thus, a star a mere twenty light-years distant may take longer to get to subjectively and practically than a star two hundred light-years away. The difficulties of knowing the exact local conditions at a star before arriving are mediated somewhat by the necessity not to overlap the fields produced by the Struven units with the gravitic underfield of curved space-time; it takes extreme computing power and reaction time to arrive safely on a consistent basis. The revised ven’Tura Piloting Tables permit both longer and more complex voyages to be safely computed for most conditions.

  —From Advanced Space Travel for Dummies, 17th ed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Bechimo

  Aubernet System

  Bechimo wasn’t there, and then he was.

  He found a word for the transition among the fettered thoughts of others—he’d not realized it before—but there it was: joy. He was pleased to be away from his former hideaway and pleased to be doing something. He’d spent many decades without the pleasure and companionship of crew.

  Despite this newfound joy—or, perhaps, because of it—he did not relax the standard security measures. He arrived with as small a Jump signature as possible, some energies baffled and dispersed across the transition barrier itself.

  He pulled in external information: guide stars were found and measured instantaneously; the local solar cycle compared to records centuries old; the faint electronic and nucleonic scents of ships and power plants registered and recorded; the noise of purposeful transmissions converted into data streams; and the echoes past of Jumps into and out of near-space weighed for specifics of mass and time.

  Internally, information was processed, also along planes and at levels which were less natural to him.

  Theo at her station acted as both filter and junction point.

  She simultaneously looked within and without, as he did. Within, all the crew continued respiration; the pathfinders, Grakow, and Hevelin were comfortable within the confines of the family suite, and the Tree, still unsure of its name but full of travel excitement, was doing something that sucked extra nutrition from the hydroponic drip Kara had added to its room. Hevelin, through Stost of all people, had requested that he and the Tree be added to the control room for the in-Jump. Theo had disallowed it, but it appeared that the Tree did not need screens to know when it was in Jump, and when it was exiting Jump.

  That was…interesting.

  Bechimo tagged that observation as worthy of later reflection.

  In one corner of his thoughts, as secret as might be, but not as secret as he would prefer, Bechimo worried over Theo, and in another corner of his thoughts, also not quite as secret as formerly, he shared information with Joyita, and marveled.

  Joyita’s ratiocination was different than his. Though Joyita’s understanding of the universe was not as encompassing as was Bechimo’s, it was more definite where it came to humans. The comm officer, Bechimo decided, though he was in Clarence’s apt phrase, his own person, also reflected the master on whom he was modeled; the mentor who had brought Bechimo to himself, long years ago. After he and Theo were more stable, Bechimo wished to follow that thought as well, and explore the myriad and fascinating possibilities with Joyita.

  Joy faded into busy; he had data streams to ply and orders to carry out. They had been in-system for seven seconds. No one, except themselves, knew that they had arrived. They were hours away from being noticed by even the most careful of scans and could be away well before that, if required.

  Within their bond space, Bechimo felt Theo sift and analyze what they were sensing. She used the filters well; his concern that she would be overwhelmed by his sense had proved without basis, as so many of his recent fears had. The habit of worry, however…was difficult to release. Caring for crew was…a difficult balance. Too much care and they would feel constrained; too little and they might damage themselves.

  Theo, now. They were becoming a better team with every Jump. For now, she was content to observe and learn, leaving the play of plasma and ions to his discretion. If there were signs of dangers in the magnetic fields, he would be the first to see it and to react. She knew that. And trusted him.

  Knowing that she trusted him…that was a different, more potent joy.

  “Would you like to see the overscan, Theo? We are too far out for many of the local feeds and so Joyita is looking for whispers; we’ve yet to decide which of the three activity centers is best for the mission.”

  He felt her hunger before she answered.

  “Show me.”

  * * * * *

  There was always a little shock of dislocation when she came back to her board from a session with Bechimo. It felt a lot like putting aside a book, knowing that the experience left behind was no less real than the experience here and now, though it was far different.

  She’d lived the micro Jump that had brought them closer in, had felt the rush of new information, denser information; sorted through it with Bechimo, until it seemed that she was Bechimo—but no. She was Theo, and her here-and-now priority was the board, the bridge, the crew, and the approach to system.

  Bechimo’s in-Jumps differed fundamentally from the in-Jumps of ordinary tradeships. To begin with, all weapons were a half-notch from liv
e, and the screens set to target rather than scan. Rig Tranza would’ve politely inquired if she was going for pirate, if she’d had Primadonna on those settings, coming in.

  Clarence had only nodded and said, “Smuggle-running, that’s all. It’ll tire you down if you do it every in, though, lass.”

  Which just showed the difference background made. Rig had been a straight-flying pilot with an honest trade line. Clarence…had, she thought, been honest, as much as he could be. But he hadn’t always flown straight.

  “Then, we’ll have to practice more,” she said. “If your captain has a reputation as a nexus of violence…”

  She’d meant it to be a joke, but she felt a touch of extra tension, not inside her own self, but in the glances and gazes of her crew.

  It was Joyita who broke the small gulf of silence.

  “We’re pulling in good feed,” he said, and now the screens were showing potential targets as their signals were recognized and analyzed. Traders—at least a dozen signals—and two freighters. They were scattered around three small orbital stations, and several more were docked. The screens showed designee numbers, then ship name or owner and PIC.

  “Anybody seen a warn-away?” Clarence asked. “Anyone know a ship?”

  That was the advantage of having crew: more eyes meant more coverage. Theo therefore let the crew work, bent now on deciding which of the stations would be best for their particular brand of reconnaissance. Knowing a ship meant connections good or bad, and until they had a count and IDs…

  “Fifteen…”

  “Unknowns,” said Kara, and Win Ton murmured, “ID K’achoodie, please, Joyita.”

  Theo scanned Minot Station’s roster of docked ships, not really expecting to recognize the names. She didn’t know that many ships, after all.

  Clarence was looking right at her when she saw it; the thrill of recognition like an ice cube down her spine. She felt Bechimo snatch the information from her, a half-second before she managed to vocalize it.

  “Primadonna! At Minot Station.”