Starliner

by David Drake

  "Not here," Wade said with a chuckle. Ran and Wanda moved much faster now that they were tethered to the starliner's massive reality. "In sponge space. I thought I might puncture a compartment, you see, and they wouldn't be able to calculate the change in mass precisely enough to continue matching us. The mass of their own vented atmosphere, you see."

  Ran looked at the other man, anonymous in a suit borrowed from the Cold Crew. "That's impossible!" he said. "You can't hit anything in sponge space."

  They were nearing silvery inlaid tracks, spreading like the braces of a spider's web from the engineering hatch. The outer airlock was open.

  "'Impossible' is one of those words used more often than wisely, my boy," Wade said. "I've always found that I could see in sponge space, after my—well, my mind, I suppose, not my eyes—had a chance to acclimate."

  "Don't say that," Ran whispered through the sudden blazing fog he remembered swelling across his marrow and soul.

  They were within twenty meters of the hatch. Wade's linked lines bellied out behind them in a great loop. Ran felt the Empress of Earth shudder through his bootsoles.

  "What's that?" he demanded. He pivoted on one foot to look all around him. There was no plume of plasma glowing behind the four engine pods he could see, so the starliner wasn't accelerating.

  "A lifeboat," Wanda said. "The enemy commander and his bridge crew, five of them. They agreed to evacuate the ship if they were given a lifeboat."

  "The Grantholm commander failed," Wade said conversationally. "Chap named Steinwagen, knew him when he was a pup. Not bad at what he did, but too narrow for an operation like this, I would have said."

  "We couldn't storm the bridge," Wanda said, "but he'd lost control of the engines and his outlying teams were—gone."

  She edged Ran in the direction of the hatch. He remained with his feet planted, watching the lifeboat swell from its bay in the Empress's side like a whale broaching in a limitless ocean.

  "They're abandoning ship here?" Ran said. The nearest galaxy was a milky blur. "Do they know that you . . . ?"

  Wade read Ran's concealed expression in the younger man's tone. "Now, lad," he said. "Steinwagen wasn't going home a failure. Nothing I did—"

  The lifeboat exploded in a flash, soundless until a chunk of plating struck the starliner and made the hull ring through Ran's boots. The ball of expanding gas had a rosy glow that disappeared as it cooled. The solid debris was invisible in the night of stars.

  "Colonel Steinwagen didn't dare be identified," Wade explained. "He'd have liked to have died fighting, he was that type, but he couldn't subject his government to the embarrassment of having his body identified. That saved us a nice little problem about how to deal with him and his chaps on the bridge. Though we could have, Ms. Holly."

  Ran was moving again. They reached the hatchway. Wanda and the civilian both urged him down the ladder ahead of them. He was too drained to argue.

  "I knew your father, lad," Wade's radio-thinned voice continued. "He served under me on Hobilo. A good man, Chick Colville. Stopped at nothing to accomplish a mission."

  Ran was trembling so hard in his suit that he was barely able to thrust his gauntlet against the switch controlling the outer airlock door.

  "His only problem was," the unseen civilian continued, "he brooded too much about things afterwards."

  The lock was swinging shut like a clamshell. The Empress's hull plating would block radio signals completely . . . .

  "No point in that, young fellow," Wade's cool voice continued as the massive door closed. "You do what you do and go on from there. Mustn't brood on things, eh?"

  Light flooded the airlock when the inner door opened. Ran lunged convulsively from the lock's narrow confines. He heard voices shouting congratulations as other people helped him out of the spacesuit.

  The only thing Ran saw was the memory in his mind's eye, a Grantholm soldier sailing past Ran Colville and into blazing eternity.

  TBLISI

  "Good morning, Ms. van de Meer," Ran said, sliding in front of the expensively-dressed woman who seemed determined to use luggage of Hobilo lizardhide as a battering ram through the crowd before her. "What an extremely attractive coat."

  The mood of passengers in the Embarkation Hall ranged from funereal to that of a carnival crowd. What was particularly notable was the number of them. Instead of the usual departure staggered by individual fuss and delay, virtually every passenger aboard the Empress of Earth was ready to leave as soon as the gangways fell.

  Some of them, like van de Meer, seemed ready to jump and damn the gangways.

  "Oh!" the woman said. "I—"

  She grounded her twin bags on the deck and lifted out the lapel of the garment, gleaming felt from the fur of a giant Calicheman water rat. The steward drawing the rest of van de Meer's luggage was far back in the mass. "Do you really think so, Mr. Colville? It was just something I got for knocking about."

  Van de Meer wasn't young, which didn't matter; and she had the heft of a rhino, which wasn't an absolute bar to Ran finding her . . . interesting. Unfortunately, she had the personality of a rhino also. The only possible interest Ran could have in her was a professional one—at the moment, to keep the self-centered hog from injuring somebody or starting a riot.

  "It goes well with your hair, besides," Ran said. He had no idea of whether or not that was true or even what the statement really meant, but it was the sort of thing women liked to hear. "Why don't you just sit right here, though, ma'am? The hatch will open in less than a minute."

  The mix of people in the tall room was that of tapioca pudding, nodules of frightened silence embedded throughout a matrix of artificially bright chatter. The stewards had been carefully briefed to stand in front of passengers instead of following them in normal fashion; but that wasn't always possible. All the Staff Side personnel were on hand in the Embarkation Hall, prepared to be as direct as the circumstances required.

  Ran turned sideways to survey the hall, looking for hot spots. He saw Wanda, but he couldn't catch her eye. She was planted like a bollard in front of a couple from Calicheman, dressed in fringed layers of suede leather. The ensemble looked rough, but Ran had seen similar outfits in starport boutiques for three thousand credits and up.

  The couple was rough, however, and they appeared willing to knock Wanda down and stamp her flat if that would speed their exit from the starliner. The Trident officer wasn't giving a millimeter. Her face was bleakly forbidding in a fashion that Ran hadn't seen until recently.

  Until the Grantholm commando had died, some of them beyond the muzzle of Wanda Holly's gun.

  The Empress bore very little sign of the fighting. A corner of the Social Hall was a gray bulkhead instead of the facade of the Temple of the Divine Julius, because the blast of a Grantholm doorknocker had damaged the hologram projector for that segment. Stewards whisked away the damaged furniture and rearranged the rest as if nothing had happened, though. The bullet holes scattered here and there across the vessel were mostly hidden by the shimmering holograms themselves.

  The same was true of the stains, though stewards scrubbed each of the battle sites thoroughly. Patterns of coherent light wouldn't hide the smell of rotting blood.

  "Here we go!" called a rating from the Second Watch, in a perhaps unintentionally loud voice. The main hatch split horizontally, the halves rising and lowering simultaneously onto the mobile shelter extension from Bogomil Terminal.

  "Welcome to Tblisi, ladies and gentlemen!" Commander Kneale called from the opposite side of the Embarkation Hall. Though he shouted, his voice was barely audible over the tramp of feet surging forward on the resilient flooring.

  The attempted hijacking had done even less physical damage to the passengers than it had to the structure of the ship. The psychic injuries were something else again.

  Ran edged aside to let the rush of passengers pass. There would be no trouble, now that they had the freedom to leave what they thought of as a cage.

  He
pressed his back against a pilaster, looking at the suddenly jubilant crowd but thinking of—other times, and other places; and of the Cold.

  "Do you think any of them will ever get back on a starliner, Ran?" Wanda asked from beside him.

  He looked down at her and smiled, glad to return to the present "Sure," he said. "Most of them have somewhere to return to, anyway. And they'll forget. It'll be an adventure, once they've been away for it for a couple days . . . and until it happens again."

  Passengers poured past them in a joyous torrent, humans and the leavening of alien faces. Wakambria, Rialvans—an individual Szgranian who must have been a courier, female and dressed in drab colors instead of glitter and weaponry. What did the aliens think of the human squabble which had almost cost them their schedule if not their very lives?

  "You think it's going to happen again?" Wanda asked softly.

  Ran didn't look at her. His eyes stared past the sea of heads and luggage bobbing down the ramp to solid ground. "Until the war ends," he said. "Or something happens to the Empress. The company's going to have to take her out of service. She's too valuable a prize."

  The crush in the Embarkation Hall had passed, leaving only a few passengers fussing in the great room with unfastened bags or concern for something forgotten in their cabins. The scattered figures quivered like puddles in a spillway after the impoundment has emptied. Commander Kneale made his way toward Ran and Wanda, tossing affable greetings to the passengers whom he passed.

  "I hope they take her out of service," Wanda said softly. She too was staring toward the gangway but seeing memories. "Because . . . if I had to do what I did. Again. I don't think that I could."

  Ran reached to his side without looking and took the Second Officer's hand. They were on duty, and in public; and when that occurred to him, he still didn't give a damn.

  "You can do anything you have to, Wanda," he said. "Anything. But that's not a reason to do it."

  "Why don't you two take the next forty-eight as leave?" Commander Kneale offered from a meter away. "I'm not disembarking myself because the repair crews are coming aboard, and—I think you've earned it."

  Ran looked at Wanda, then met his superior's eyes. "Sir," he said. "We need to talk, you and I."

  Kneale nodded calmly. "All right," he said. "Do you want to do it now?"

  Ran looked out toward the gangway and thought about the domed skyline of Bogomil beyond. "No sir," he said, "Right now I want to get off the Empress. Almost as bad as the passengers did."

  Kneale nodded and smiled. His square, powerful hand swept smoothly toward the gangway. "Then go," he said. "We'll talk another time. You've earned that too, Mr. Colville."

  * * *

  The sky was so clear and vast that Dewhurst's wife didn't even comment on the slight orange tint to the sunlight that would in normal circumstances have been her first public reaction to Tblisi. She spread her arms and cried, "Oh, what a terrible experience! I was sure that we were all going to be killed."

  "Now, now, Ms. Dewhurst," Wade said. "It didn't cost us anything but perhaps eight hours off our scheduled arrival, and surely the chance of a good story was worth that to all of us. Eh, Dewhurst?"

  Dewhurst shook his head more in wonder than disagreement. "Adventures are things that happen to other people, Wade," he said. "Personally, I think I like it that way. Anyway, I can't claim that hiding in my cabin for several hours was much of an adventure, though I suppose—"

  He looked hard at Wade.

  "—it might be possible to embellish the facts a little,"

  Belgeddes chuckled. "Adventure's where you find it. Isn't that so, Dickie?"

  "What I'd like to know . . ." said Da Silva as his eyes slid back to his companions from the buildings across the boulevard from the terminal. Ten- and twelve-story brick facades, with swags and carved transoms, lined the thoroughfare. ". . . is just how many of the Grantholmers there were. It can't have been more than a handful, and there were thousands of us aboard."

  "You think we should have—what, attacked men with guns?" Dewhurst said. "Refused to cooperate?"

  "Nothing of the sort!" Wade said forcefully. "Leave that to the professionals, to the ship's officers and crew. That's no business for passengers, after all."

  Ms. Dewhurst elbowed her husband and nodded toward the fleet of buses and taxis jogging forward to carry away disembarked passengers. "Shouldn't we . . . ?" she said.

  "Yes, I suppose we should," Dewhurst agreed.

  He looked at his companions for the voyage. "I don't suppose you chaps are booked for the return sailing?" he said, a trifle wistfully.

  Da Silva shook his head. "We're not all vacationers," he said. "I'll be here a month at least. Longer if my firm decides to set up a permanent office."

  "Nor us, friend," Wade agreed, "though we'd considered it. The difference between vacationing and retirement is that nobody expects us to be anywhere. We'll take another ship from here. Maybe a freighter, for a change."

  "There's always something popping around Dickie," Belgeddes said, shaking his head with a wry expression. "Been saying that for fifty years, so I suppose it's the way I like things to be."

  "Well . . ." Dewhurst said. His eyes narrowed. "What on earth is that in your luggage, Wade?" he demanded. "A cannon?"

  "Something like that," Wade agreed, looking at the 15-mm rifle strapped onto his well-worn trunk. Even taken down into two pieces, the weapon looked long and clumsy. "It was given me as a souvenir, I suppose you'd call it."

  "Dear," said Ms. Dewhurst, tugging her husband's sleeve.

  Dewhurst twisted his arm away. "In a damned minute!" he snapped.

  "From Calicheman?" Da Silva asked.

  "I believe so, originally," Wade agreed.

  Belgeddes chuckled.

  "Shouldn't doubt there'll be a story in it the next time somebody comments on the thing," Dewhurst said—half gibing, but half sorry to know that he wouldn't be present when the story was told.

  "Shouldn't doubt that you were right," Belgeddes agreed.

  A limousine pulled into the cab rank. When a taxi hooted its horn angrily at the interloper, a uniformed traffic warden rapped the cab's windshield firmly enough with her baton to threaten the glass.

  "There he is," said Belgeddes.

  "Your ride?" Da Silva said in amazement

  "Not exactly," said Wade. "Tom and I have business, well, elsewhere for the while. But we took the liberty of arranging three days for you in the penthouse of the Circassia Palas. Manager's a friend of ours, you see. He's sent his personal car for you."

  "The penthouse?" Ms. Dewhurst gasped. "We could never afford that, Mr. Wade!"

  "It's on me, good lady," Wade explained with a courtly bow. "The least I could do after all the drinks your husband and Mr. Da Silva here bought me during the past weeks."

  Belgeddes nodded. "Never remembers to carry small change," he murmured. "You'd think Dickie'd have learned in fifty years, but he never has."

  "Perhaps we'll meet again," said Wade as he straightened. "It's not so big a universe as some people think."

  "Until then," Belgeddes added. He gave Da Silva and the Dewhursts a languid salute, then followed his taller companion back toward a door in the terminal marked OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY.

  Even Ms. Dewhurst gaped after them. The limousine's chauffeur waited stolidly, continuing to hold the vehicle's door open.

  * * *

  "It's a triumph of people over architects," Wanda Holly said to Ran as they sauntered through a trattoria with tables of extruded plastic and exquisite, hand-carved chairs.

  Bogomil Old Town was an area of slab-built concrete buildings set in a rectangular grid of broad streets, a district as functional as a prison. Though preserved as a monument to the early days of the colony, Old Town was a living museum whose current-day residents added humanizing touches.

  Apartment facades were individually painted, and no two suites had identical sets of shutters. The entranceway of a seven-story box was fra
med with pillars of hammered copper extending to roof level and supporting balcony railings at each floor. On all the buildings fronting the Mirza, an arm of the sea too shallow for commercial navigation, the ground-floor shops were open in front so that they could spill out onto the boulevard.

  "Happy-looking place," Ran commented.

  "Peaceful" wouldn't be the right word, however. Locals sipping clear liquor not infrequently shouted and made the flimsy tables jounce with their fists. There was passion as well in the haggling of brightly-dressed shoppers; and though the knives most men wore were for show, a culture whose ornamentation includes weaponry is not wholly peaceful.

  But then, no organism that survives to pass on its genes will be wholly peaceful.

  "A place you'd like to live?" Wanda asked.

  Ran looked out over the Mirza. Couples were rowing there. It must be possible to rent boats somewhere.

  "No," he said softly. "I wouldn't belong here."

  He faced Wanda. She was watching him, and he couldn't read her expression. "I don't belong anywhere, Wanda," he said. "Not even on Bifrost, not after I went through the library Dad brought back from—from Hobilo."

  Ran smiled, and though he had to force it, the impulse was real enough. He was better off than most people. It was just that he knew where he was, while not many other folks seemed to. Maybe they were happier not to know, but ignorance hadn't been something Chick Colville held forth as a virtue to his son.

  "I'm . . ." Ran continued. "Everybody's—out of place, you know, on a starliner. I'm happy there, I'm where I ought to be."

  They skirted a shop selling hologram projectors and other electronics, much of it locally made. Tblisi had considerable industry, though grain and fisheries were its main exports, and out-system trade traveled on foreign bottoms. The Empress of Earth docked in a three-meter news projection, while a newsreader's voice gave a garbled account of the attempted hijacking.