Liaden Universe 20: The Gathering Edge

by Sharon Lee

  It was something like talking to herself as she moved in the dimness. His presence meant she might have danced in the absolute dark and would have an absolute sense of location…so she knew whose voice she heard, even if Bechimo didn’t always reach conversational mode now: sometimes information just became apparent; data manifested, images arrived and were mentally absorbed. That he reached this time for words meant that he was concerned. And he was right to be concerned. If she were at less than peak, she would endanger them all.

  She shifted her stance and entered a series of forms that would lead, soon, to a satisfying conclusion to the dance.

  “Do you think I’ve been foolish to commit us? Expose us?” she asked.

  Bechimo’s pause was no longer than a polite conversational break.

  “You have reached a decision and established a course of action. I cannot measure the future interactions of the humans you are dealing with. I have no evidence that either the decision or the course is a foolish.

  “Clarence has achieved your desired changes to the contract; it is awaiting your signature.

  “Win Ton has achieved an estimate of the total of Pilot Tranza’s financial obligations to the station.

  “Kara is practicing the pod transfer on sim, based on my assurance that the approach will be at an appropriate angle.

  “I am monitoring external communications. Rig Tranza has not received a reply to any of his transmissions. The various shipyard committees continue to speak to each other on the need for an intervention in response to Minot Station’s search for an outside fixed-base operator to assist the station. I have acquired copies of the contents of portions of the shipyard files and portions of the libraries and data of other local ships. There’s also some sentiment blaming Rig Tranza for the actions of the missing pilot. I monitor as many lines of…”

  “We shouldn’t…”

  “You have not determined that I should not; you have not requested the data searches be limited. Information is useful. The more information we have, the better we may protect ourselves.”

  Theo couldn’t argue that, and she didn’t. Instead, she brought her attention wholly again to the dance, its conclusion a mere two forms distant. As she defined space with her movements, she concentrated on a different space, which she used to know well. Primadonna, the bridge and passages; the location of the cabins. If Tranza had taken her out of the computer; if the cues had been changed…This next throw depended—over-depended—on the hope that nothing had changed, that Mayko’s furlough order hadn’t triggered changes more dire than the ship simply wrapping itself in silence. It was possible. Mayko had been Tranza’s student before her; Mayko had known the ship well…

  Theo brought her hands together, sweeping them to the right as she extended her left leg back, and transferred her weight. She finished the sweep, pushed off of her back leg. Her forward hand became a battering ram, her trailing hand right behind it pushed palm top to palm bottom, her weight centered over poised feet. She was a wall withstanding an attack and remained so for the count of three deep breaths, whereupon she brought her hands before her in a quiet ball as she went completely to center, gathering energy with one last sweep, and absorbing it as her arms came down with a sigh.

  And there. She was now fit to ask the questions, Bechimo being present and the questions still needing to be asked.

  “Are you satisfied with the state of the bonding, Bechimo? I had feared the bond originally. I was…concerned…that I would be overwhelmed, that I would be absorbed and…controlled. I never liked to be controlled and I’ve always fought to be myself, sometimes in stupid and silly ways.”

  She stepped into her cooldown, allowing Bechimo’s subtle ministrations in the way of air currents and temperatures and humidity to caress her.

  “And now I…I’m worried. About you. About…us, I guess. Win Ton, the night I first sat second on a spaceship—he told me that I’d entranced him, made him drunk with me. We were…pretty tangled up at the time and sweaty and not done yet, and I thought it was, ummm, love play. But here he is now. Is he in a trance? Did I cloud his judgment? He gave me a set of wings and helped make me a star pilot.”

  She stood entirely still and looked into the dimness at his walls.

  “And you, my friend. Are you in a trance now? You’ve made me captain of you and all you are and all of your future. Do I cloud your judgment? Do I make us all unsafe because you’re drunk with me, because you admire my, my…mystery and let me do what I will, even if I’m making a mistake that will kill most of the people I care about?”

  There was no answer at first, and the pause lengthened. Light came up unbidden, the cool breeze became more pronounced.

  “Theo, I have considered this myself. I have considered that I am less confined to absolute safety. And I have considered what Win Ton has said to me and to Joyita in preparing for his piloting test. I think—and this is considered thought—that Win Ton may have the right of it. We have come to be bonded very nearly by chance; accident after accident falling together. I consider my source and I consider yours. I believe that we are part of this gathering edge of change—and that we must be. Unbonding…I will not consider.

  “My goal is that we survive. When I see danger I will report it. If I see an erroneous decision, I will report it. You are my captain and I will have your commands. I have no greater joy than this, Theo.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Minot Station

  The image on the screen was from a stolen feed; Bechimo’s zoom from the wider image showed Theo appearing nearly waiflike in the oversized and battered jacket she wore. She was approaching Primadonna’s docking vestibule, walking away from the camera source.

  Despite the image, Kara wished for a word from that calm, strolling figure. It was quite ridiculous, and the decision not to use comm on dock a sensible one. They did not, after all, wish to rouse the surveillance mics, nor to share their business with Minot Station security. Still, it was a chancy thing Theo undertook—

  Kara shook her head, cutting off the thought.

  This was Theo. Of course the thing was chancy.

  Kara frowned at the video. Theo was very nearly arrived at her destination; the camera had zoomed, building the image to better detail. In fact, to suspiciously good detail.

  “Are you interpolating and interpreting the video now?” she asked Joyita. “If they have that good a camera on her…”

  She had seen Theo this closely herself, knew the small scar at her hairline, had brushed it gently. It ought not to be quite so clear on a security feed!

  Bechimo answered her, sounding, if such a thing were to be believed, sheepish. “You are correct Kara. I am correcting the images, both for lighting and detail. I am monitoring and watching closely for preliminary signs of concern, or danger.”

  The screen now displayed another shot of Theo, much more distant, tracking.

  In his tower, Joyita waved a hand at a console and it mirrored the image Kara studied now.

  “This is the live camera feed from dockside that Station Admin sees. The slow zoom is the one they are tracking manually. They are expecting activity.”

  The activity they might be expecting was not exactly what they were seeing. Admin had been told that a tech was going down to Primadonna to look at the remote panels sometimes used for planetside work. Admin, of course, knew that Kara was a pilot; perhaps they thought that they were seeing Kara or yet another Bechimo crew member moving to the task, at least as long as they hadn’t studied a dossier on Theo.

  Kara sighed lightly. Hevelin was sitting on her lap, to all appearances entranced by the images. He had been quite excited earlier, when the feed had shown them Clarence and his backups on the way to their appointment. Each had worn a weapon openly, for Clarence carried…quite a lot of cash for Pilot Tranza’s buyout. Theo had insisted on cash, and Clarence, for a wonder, had agreed wholeheartedly.

  “I gotta have room to maneuver when it comes to bribes and hints. ’Sides, Adm
in’ll think they’re smart for getting some of what they paid us back on the spot.”

  The image on the screen changed again, briefly meditating upon the drone tug station-keeping Primadonna as promised. The operators claimed that they needed less than a Standard Minute to pluck the thing away, once it was unlocked.

  Kara sighed as the screen again showed Theo’s face. The security image displayed Theo in shadow, captured through a dust-fogged lens. Bechimo’s enhanced image showed Theo, calm and steady, clear and bright, as if she every day made a not-quite-illegal, but not-exactly-legal entry into a ship on a port far from home. It also showed strain lines in Theo’s face that Kara had not previously noticed. And—Kara’s eyes were sharp—the outline of the hefty weapon sometimes carried as her public gun.

  Mentally, Kara danced three forms in order, centering herself. Events occur, let them…her breath evened. She touched the internal comm button.

  “Chernak, are you well?” she asked the pathfinder, who was on call in the galley.

  “I am well, Kara. I see the captain has almost reached her goal.”

  Kara looked to the screen, saw Theo steps away from Primadonna’s hatch.

  “So she is. The next minute will tell us—everything.”

  “I watch,” Chernak said, and Kara nodded, releasing the button.

  Her concentration was firm, the transfer script memorized, but still ready on her screen. She had done pod-connects before, though most frequently from pod racks rather than the tug style they’d be doing today…

  …Hopefully be doing today.

  “Kara, I’m getting a communication from Admin. Something about a delivery from that intern you spoke of?” Joyita was getting good at Terran inflections.

  “Now?”

  She only half-swallowed the rest of her reaction, using a recheck of boom-lock positions to cover her language.

  “Advise them the PIC suggests the ship is busy at their necessity, if you please,” she said. “Crew will not be receiving until after the transfer is complete.”

  “Yes,” Joyita said.

  Kara looked again to her screen, as Theo’s hands touched Primadonna’s exposed control pads. The security shrouds deployed, enveloping and hiding her even from Bechimo’s augmented surveillance.

  Kara sighed with relief at that: the shrouds would have failed to deploy if the ship had failed to recognize Theo. One potential obstacle was overcome.

  Now, all she—they—had to do…was wait.

  * * * * *

  Dockside controls were always cold on the hands in Terran space, where the docks weren’t heated above bare necessity.

  The shrouds not only shielded her from the eyes of the curious, but also deadened external sound.

  Distantly, Theo heard the vague clang and stubbed walk of a pedestrian unused to the dock grid, but that was no concern of hers.

  She uncovered the twin scanners looking into the deep-welled camera that checked her face and features. The lights above the panel failed to respond, which was as it should be. An absolute stranger would have needed to display an optical-scan card to go further. Primadonna remembered her—or maybe it remembered the jacket. Rig Tranza’s mind was not an easy one to know, and it was possible that the scratches and wear patterns were not all accident. Deep breath now. At least she wouldn’t have to sing, though Tranza would have preferred it.

  Theo’s gloves were still pocketed; bare hands flawlessly pressed the freezing-cold flat plates in the proper order, at the proper angle. The door plate glowed, and a three-note query sounded, high and clear, as if struck from fine crystal.

  Theo relaxed, elated. Almost in! One more security test to pass.

  She took a breath and recited the arcane words without difficulty.

  “Sing a song of sex pants, pockets full of dry, four and plenty blackburrs, staked in a pie!”

  Three breaths now, four, five…She wondered if Clarence had ever cooked a blackburr pie, or if he would.

  Her triumph faded. The hatch remained closed and locked, no entry—and this was a single-use code, which was wiped on successful completion.

  The three notes sounded again.

  SECOND VERSE flashed dull red in the security screen.

  Theo’s stomach tightened.

  Pharst, she hadn’t studied the thing! He just always sang it when he was in that mood where he might sing songs for days, or he might have a brew and stare at the stuff he called art…

  Well, she hadn’t come here to fail. She had a good memory after all. She just needed to visualize Tranza, in his favorite corner of the galley, eyes half closed and the beer to hand…

  “When the pie was opened,” she began slowly, “the burrs began to sing. And…wasn’t that a dainty fish, to catch…before the ring?”

  Eyes squinted, she watched the screen.

  THANK YOU flashed the message, and there was a distinct clunk as the hatch mechanisms began to work.

  * * *

  The inside of the ship smelled the same, but it felt cramped and alien, with too many Hugglelans logos everywhere. She’d not recalled them feeling so overbearing when she’d been copilot—and hadn’t really realized how roomy and even luxurious Bechimo really was.

  The hall ahead of her was shadowed. Primadonna was on standby dims until she announced herself. Theo stepped beyond the vestibule, feeling the hatch close behind her.

  The three notes sounded.

  “Who am I?” she asked the air, knowing there was no real intelligence behind the routine she was going through, just programming aimed at security.

  “Theo Waitley,” said her own voice, of several years gone by, sounding young and naive.

  “Correct,” she affirmed.

  Lighting came up and fans began to hum. Her seat—what had been her seat—hummed as settings she’d assumed had been long ago logged off reasserted themselves. A double thunk came from the direction of crew quarters, the sound of inner airlocks opened to ship normal and inner doors unlocking.

  She crossed the bridge and took her chair. Second board.

  Screens came up, displaying information meant for a pilot, information meant for—

  “Oh, Tranza,” she sighed, between frustration and dismay. He’d never taken her out of the ship’s command line, and now here she was, setting up to take the ship’s cargo, close enough to pirate—but no. Rig had cleared the removal, and his was the only permission she cared about. Hugglelans ship it might be, but she’d always thought of Primadonna as belonging to Rig Tranza.

  The small screen set into the top of her board was asking her to set a new code. A new captain’s code.

  She looked around, feeling an extra presence and an awareness—if she wanted to use it, she had the authority, right now, to reset herself as captain of this ship and become a pirate in truth. She could do it; there were ways to automate things…

  It was tempting. It was astonishingly tempting. And it would be so very easy.

  Theo took a hard breath and—thought of Kara. Kara, who would never be tempted to steal a ship simply because she could. Kara, who knew right from wrong, even if Theo didn’t.

  She was concentrating so hard that she could very nearly see Kara—no.

  She was actually seeing Kara, hunkered over her boards on Bechimo’s bridge, her face serious, as it would be. Not only that, but she could hear—she was hearing—a voice demanding to know if that ship had been boarded, if the pod overrides were internal after all…and that was bad. She had to hurry.

  Bechimo’s bridge faded, the demanding voice cut off in mid-demand, and she was seeing Primadonna and the boards, live.

  Three slaps at the controls and piloting comp gave way to cargo; two more and the logs were up and the pod controls to hand. Cargo controls self-checked, three-noted, and waited.

  She nearly requested contact out loud—but this ship didn’t take voice commands, as prepped; Tranza having said on more than one occasion that he might sing to himself, but he was damned if he was going to talk to hims
elf. Theo fingered the switch for the low-power, ship-to-ship comm used in port, and selected the freq.

  “Bechimo Engineering, Primadonna Cargo here. We have control lights. Power’s up. Pod hears and obeys.”

  She released the fields that tied the pod to the Struven units, making the pod alien to inertial ship movements and ready for reposition and plucking.

  “We have time issues. Confirm.”

  Kara’s voice answered, without Joyita’s intercession.

  “Confirm, Primadonna, time issues. I’ve told the pickup team we’re live. Please make sure the beacon is on.”

  And there, so simple a thing, forgotten, like she was a novice…of course the beacon had to be on; they were doing a spaceside live double transfer, not a crane pull.

  “Confirm!” she said and before the word was finished her hands had completed that task.

  Her awareness was all around her—the pod felt ready to go, beacon on, only the lightest of physical break-away latches now kept the pod still and in place.

  “Ready,” she said to Kara. “Inform the tug.”

  “Informing tug,” said Kara as Theo leaned back in her chair.

  All she had to do now was wait.

  * * * * *

  They waited for word: the deal had been that once the pod was successfully mounted on Bechimo, Primadonna’s role in the transfer would be seen as over—and the burden of all the other legal travails would fall to the arrested ship and not to the pilot. Rig Tranza could walk out then, so long as his up-to-the-second charges for room and board were covered to the bit.

  Tranza was, improbably, recording a local audio-only feed supplying music archived from one or another of the station’s private holidays and made by amateurs.

  “You’ll watch that for me, right?” he said to Clarence. “I want to get what I can of this—I’ve got cuts from the last three of these and want to grab…just let me know when we’re ready to go, right?”

  Clarence nodded, Win Ton bowed, Stost…surveyed the cramped and dingy area, eyes bright.

  They were all three armed, of course, with the burden of most of Bechimo’s cash treasury shared between Clarence and Win Ton.