Dragon Ship

by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller

  Clarence didn’t look at her.

  Well, then. She turned back to Grafton.

  “I hired this man with the best of recommendations available to me. He was declared a reputable and honest pilot and his Guild record showed no mar.”

  Grafton nodded.

  “Let’s make it clear—you are not related to O’Berin; he’s not your father or any other blood relative.”

  “I have no blood relationship to Clarence O’Berin that I am aware of. I was born on Delgado, the daughter of a scholar, and I may still claim myself citizen of Delgado if I so wish. I have seen the record of my bloodlines, and there are no O’Berins in it.”

  “Unbiased report,” said Grafton to the machine.

  “And this last,” he said, looking hard at Clarence. “Understand the man put money down to make this allegation.”

  Clarence said nothing. Grafton looked down at the handheld.

  “Says here that you are an agent of the Juntavas.”

  Clarence raised his hands slightly, looked a bit helpless, and in pilot sign let go a string of impossible acts and unlikely states of being, all with the attribute that one.

  “A man looking to cause as much trouble as he could for another man,” he said, as if the flood of sign had loosened his tongue, “a man with a guilty soul and revenge in his heart, that’s what that kind of a man would say, isn’t it?”

  Grafton lifted the handheld.

  “We need to hear the answer to the question—are you an active agent of the Juntavas?”

  “No,” said Clarence.

  Well, that was clear, Theo thought.

  Grafton nodded, and spoke to the handheld.

  “This session report concludes that there’s an admission of reciprocal antagony, a denial of other allegations, and no evidence on the other charges. Therefore we will settle with session fees. Should Hiramson O’Nandy O’dell appear on account of this action he shall pay twice the assessment, with interest. This investigative hearing”—here he fumbled for the controls a moment, again—“is complete.”

  Grafton looked down at unit, and then to Theo.

  “That went two hundred bits and ten against the account, Pilot. I’m sorry . . . but you’re all clear, and being a civil thing, it won’t show on the records again, being done.”

  Grafton slipped his unit back into its belt loop, turned, took a half step, and stopped.

  “Clary, Clary, what a stupid person you hired. I’m so sorry on this, and we owe you a proper breakfast, if you can stand me.”

  Clarence’s face looked odd, almost like there were tears in his eyes, and he made a hand motion which brought Grafton and Rutland both to him, hugging where he stood.

  Theo wasn’t sure what to say, but she saw Clarence look ’round to the main screen, with the countdown to the end of his leave.

  He squeezed the security team one more time, and pulled away.

  “We’ll see how the trading goes, and I swear I’ll try. Right now, my leave shift is about up, and you didn’t get breakfast, too.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Tradedesk

  That, Clarence thought as he hit speed-clean on the ’fresher, had been a mite too close for comfort. And a solid man was Graf, for adding on that active while giving now or ever as wide a berth as a pilot could manage. He thought even Theo’d bought the packet, which he’d prefer, and not only just for reasons of not wanting to have to explain himself and his reasons to a girl young enough to be his . . .

  His sudden grin felt like it sat sidewise on his mouth, but for certain there it was, him and Daav being within three Standards of each other.

  Well, then.

  He stepped out of the ’fresher, grabbed a sweater and pants, shoved his feet into slippers and ran for the center of things, not late yet, for his shift.

  * * *

  “So, we’ll make that part of the incoming protocols?” the pilot was saying to the ship as Clarence entered the Heart. Screen Six was filled with blue sky and good wishes, and the answer to Theo’s question came from behind and slightly above.

  “Pilot, I will upon approach perform a scan of outstanding warrants and complaints, civil, administrative, and criminal. If a crew member should be named in an open warrant of any kind, I will alert the Over Pilot and the crew member so named.”

  “Good,” Theo said, and Clarence had to agree. Reasonable precaution. Too bad he hadn’t thought of it himself, and long before.

  A few steps out from his chair, he paused. The lock-down light still glowed in the corner of his board, which he suspected meant that she wasn’t through with him yet. Despite not being of a particularly nervous disposition, he did feel a flutter of apprehension.

  “Thank you, Bechimo,” Theo said, and considered the screen before her with a certain aspect of deliberateness.

  Clarence’s apprehension intensified. He took a breath and bowed to the pilot’s honor.

  “Thank you, Pilot. I will of course reimburse the ship, for those costs incurred on my behalf.”

  She looked at him then, and lifted a hand, fingers requesting silence.

  Silence it was, then, and him of a sudden glad he hadn’t had a bit o’breakfast. Here, he’d been so happy to be flyin’ honest—and wouldn’t it just look fine on the record, that he’d been put aside at Tradedesk, for having a sworn warrant against his name?

  Theo took a breath, as if she was about to say something, shook her head, took another breath—and sighed sharply.

  “I’m postponing my leave until we do a check on outstanding warrants, inquiries, challenges, and actions for all personnel currently aboard. That includes me, that includes you, that includes Win Ton, and for that matter, it includes Bechimo. Please have a seat, Clarence.”

  Clarence sat, noting that the lock-down light was still bright.

  “Bechimo, you don’t have a hold on you in any port that you know of, do you?”

  Screen Six firmed.

  “Pilot, not as a registered and identified vessel or person, no.”

  Theo sent a frowning glance at the screen, where the clouds had faded away, leaving Joyita, also frowning, and apparently following the conversation with interest.

  “Is that equivocation?” Theo demanded.

  “Exactitude, Pilot. In the course of the last several hundred years alone, I have been challenged to identify myself dozens of times. I have been pursued, and was given orders to stand by for boarding. I withstood several efforts at boarding by pirates and brigands. You are aware of the most recent challenge to my integrity, and its aftermath. At no time during these encounters was I displaying identification numbers, markings, or ID, nor was I emitting identifiable transmissions.”

  “Right,” she said, “then you better check the systems and see if there’s anything out there for me.”

  “Yes, Pilot, I am performing that search now.”

  “Thank you.”

  She glanced down at her hands, as if regretting the lack of fancywork, then looked back to his face, eyes snapping sharp.

  “Are there any more of these hanging around for you, Clarence? Little surprises waiting in a gravity well? Anything that could get you locked up, instead of just fined? Anything that would endanger this ship?”

  Well, now, there it was—and he was proved a fool and an idiot. One thing a wise person just didn’t undertake in the presence of your plain-and-fancy Dragon was endangering a ship. Any other thing might be forgiven, or overlooked, but that?

  Never.

  “That’s a fair question, Pilot,” he said keeping it civil without making any attempt to soothe her.

  “Truth told, I had no idea the matter with O’dell was about. He must’ve thought I was after him personally, to have been pushed to such a thing, him being a laddie who never liked to see the inside of a magistrate’s office, nor held with spending money except to buy his own pleasure. Damn little need of me going after him in person, if I’d’ve wanted him. But there—I didn’t want him. And didn’t want his blood all o
ver the shop floor, either.”

  “Yes,” she said, plainly soothing him. “I understand that you acted with great restraint in the matter of Mr. O’dell, and you might tell me more about that in a moment. But otherwise? Is there anything else?”

  “Nothing active that I know about,” he told her, which, considering, was as positive as he could say. “Anywhere.”

  She nodded.

  “Make us some tea,” she said abruptly, suddenly and shockingly in the Liaden High Tongue—ranking-person-to-lesser—nailed it dead-on, too, bless the girl. “I wish to order my thoughts.”

  — • —

  The tea having been brought and sampled, Theo leaned back in her chair and looked into her copilot’s serious and attentive face. It came to her that Clarence was a dangerous man.

  It came to her that Father had recommended him to her because he was a dangerous man.

  Theo took a breath, centering herself before she began.

  “I’m young, Clarence, and I’ve been in some trouble. I have some files on me, you know, and I’ve been tracked some, just like anyone who’s trying to do something. On Delgado I’m probably still listed as someone who is clumsy and needs drugs so she won’t hurt anyone . . .”

  She said that musingly, sipped from her cup, and was rewarded with a startled glance from Clarence’s side of the control board.

  “I never did finish the course of study there so I’m probably still carrying some incompletes, because they were going to be considered final when I graduated from Anlingdin. But then, at Anlingdin, I was ruled a ‘nexus of violence’ by the Academy . . . I guess that’s gone worldwide there since I didn’t go find a job minding an automat, and beg for reinstatement after a couple years.” She shook her head. “I’m the first woman in my family ever who failed to complete her basic, and her secondary, course of study. But I wanted to be a pilot, and I am a pilot. A young pilot, maybe, but I intend to get older.”

  She paused, regarding Clarence steadily. He returned her gaze from his blue, blue eyes, his face serious.

  “So,” she said, “a young pilot, who’s been on some worlds, and had some trouble on two. And what I hear now, from the security officers here on Tradedesk, is that you’ve got antagony.”

  Clarence didn’t say anything; she hadn’t expected him to, really.

  She shrugged.

  “That’s not a mark against you as a pilot, I don’t think, though I guess back on Delgado they’d warn Safeties if you were around, because obviously willful antagony is antisocial, yes?”

  He nodded, carefully.

  “Yes. And I expect you might get looked at hard on Eylot, too, on account of being a pilot from away. And if they saw scoundrel in your file they’d probably go from looking to watching, which you don’t want. But that’s not a problem, because we’re not going to Eylot on my schedule.”

  She picked up her teacup and sipped. Clarence did likewise.

  “Now this scoundrel thing,” she continued. “I had to look that up, and it seems to depend a whole lot on where you take the readings as to who is or isn’t, what does or doesn’t make a scoundrel. In some places running off for a night of fun with a couple would make one a scoundrel, I guess, but you don’t seem like you’re doing stuff just to be antisocial, so we’ll discount that.”

  He nodded again, his face more, rather than less, serious.

  Theo sighed then.

  “You can count, too, so you know where this goes. I heard you answer that last question very carefully, and I have this thing in my head that people used to fall down around me and so I was called clumsy, and then people started doing dangerous stuff around me so I got tagged as a nexus.”

  Her copilot volunteered nothing. Theo put her cup down, carefully.

  “Now, I’m young, Clarence,” she said, “and I haven’t seen as much as you have, or been as many places. But this Juntavas thing, that’s a serious kind of a tag to carry with you, if you do.”

  Silence, the blue gaze never wavering.

  She returned that gaze hard, and snapped, “What I want from you right now, Pilot, is a clear understanding of why Whoever O’dell might paint that particular detail to hold you off his course. Were you a courier pilot for them? Did you ever do work for the Juntavas?”

  Surprisingly, he grinned, while his hands showed good course straight course, pilot.

  “Father’s daughter, aren’t you just, Theo Waitley?”

  He paused to stare into his cup, drained the remainder of his tea as if it was a bar drink he was desperately in need of.

  Cup down, he relaxed into his seat, suddenly boneless.

  “We have a long story, we do, Pilot, and some of it you’re not going to get, just like you’re not going to give me the particulars of where you went and what you did for the Uncle, that being not only confidential, but dangerous to know.

  “Still, some of this you ought to have, and since you’ve got your father’s instincts, I’ll give it broad except where that’s not clear enough.

  “To answer true—yes. I did run courier for the Juntavas. It paid good—especially by Strabane standards—and I liked the work. That was years back—I was close enough to your age, I’ll wager.

  “The O’dell named himself, so I’m not giving you a name you didn’t know. Details you don’t need to know . . . well, you don’t. O’dell, though, he worked for me, coming in to the job in small part ’cause he was from home; maybe he was seventh cousin four times removed. Then he started in to pilfering and tinkering with arrangements way over his head; and it came public to the crew before I could talk him out quiet. So, then, I had to deal. I could have shot him on the spot, and upset none but the cleaning crew—and them not out of reason—and myself. I thought I owed him his life, ’cause I’d given him a break, I guess. Not the laddie’s fault; he’d never been taught no better.”

  He touched his cup, where it sat in the slot, apparently remembered that it was empty and sighed, meeting Theo’s eyes.

  “That’s the core of it—I let him live, and he pulled this stupidity.”

  Theo nodded gravely.

  “So this was a pilot thing? He was a danger to the ship? Or . . .”

  Clarence shook his head.

  “Not on a ship. Thing is, I did good work, not to say annoying some as it would’ve been better not to, and I got . . . promoted. The O’dell worked for me.”

  Theo closed her eyes, followed trails, opened eyes directly on Clarence.

  “I thought you worked at freight forwarding all those years, on Liad?”

  “Father’s daughter,” he said again, a smile in his eyes. “I did.”

  Theo frowned. “You were working on the side for the Juntavas? And Father knew this?”

  Clarence pressed his lips together, uncrossed his arms and leaned toward her.

  “No and yes. ’Course your father knew who I was—he had to, ’cause him and his lady were Korval. Me, they had to know, because I was their opposite number—like your cousin Pat Rin called Conrad there on Surebleak . . . I was a Boss. Juntavas Boss, if you like that, which most do. Thing is, that with Korval guiding things on Liad like they did, it was a kind of quiet post for a smart Juntava.”

  “My father was friends with the Juntavas Boss?”

  “Told you different, right first, didn’t I?” Clarence asked sternly.

  Theo frowned—and she remembered it, her very first conversation with Clarence O’Berin, asking if he had been Father’s friend.

  Friends—well, now, we might could’ve been, in a different set of circumstances . . .

  “I remember,” she told him. “You set a value on him, but he had his melant’i and you had your business to tend.”

  “That was the way of it,” he said, nodding. “Couldn’t be friends. More like two cats guarding turf—in fact exactly like two cats guarding turf. Korval was top cat, and the whole clan knew who we were. There was a policy in place that both sides tried to keep to—something put in by a Boss and a delm long ago. The d
eal was that it wasn’t worth Korval messing with us as long as we weren’t messing with Korval. Every so often one of ours would get a bit ahead of themselves and Korval’d be right there and make sure the policy hadn’t been forgot. That was the problem with the O’dell, messing on the edges of things that could have brought Korval right down on my head, harder than either of us would’ve wanted, to be sure the point was made.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “That,” he said then, “that’s what you need to know, I’m thinking. I was Boss and kept a low profile, did what I did, wasn’t never charged there or nowhere with the doing of anything.”

  “That’s how you knew about Uncle, then?”

  “Some things you got to know, yes. That was one of the things I had to know.”

  “So are you Juntavas now?”

  “Like I told Graf—no. I’m strictly retired. Very strictly. I’m here to fly, because after I got tangled in the job I had, there wasn’t an easy getting out for years.”

  Theo closed her eyes.

  A reputable and honest pilot, Father had said. A man who knows how to take orders.

  And dangerous—that, because he was traveling with her, and she drew trouble like a magnet drew iron.

  Opening her eyes, she looked right at Clarence.

  “If I think of more questions, I reserve the right to ask. Meanwhile, on the fine, I’m sure you’ll have expenses for the ship from time to time. Pay out of pocket until you’re even and let Bechimo know.”

  She extended an arm and touched a button. The lock-down light on second board went out.

  “There’s messages,” she said, standing and stretching, “a pretty fair flood of them. Call me if you need my input, Pilot.”

  Clarence sighed.

  “Thank you, Pilot,” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Tradedesk

  The Carresens were both a family and a process.

  As a family they were of Terran extraction and had interests in ships and shipping going back generations. They could follow their generations back a long way, too; at least to the period of the Great Terran Wars when rapid expansion had almost caused the Terran worlds to wipe themselves out in a mad fit of protectionism and trade wars.