Dragon Ship

by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller

  “Independent Tradeship Bechimo, registered of Waymart, PIC First Class Pilot Theo Waitley, reports the destruction of a ship known to us as Beeslady, with all hands lost, due to willful hostile action on the part of Eylot Military Command. Beeslady, a light utilty craft, was to the best of my knowledge unnavigable after being holed by Eylot weapons, and the pilot reported that the state of the ship and pilot after that encounter made abandoning ship unlikely. Pilot—is that Govans prime or secondary?—Pilot Govans reported blood on the flight deck and a damaged flight suit. She requested assistance shortly before the ship’s systems failed catastrophically, leaving no habitable situation and no sign or likelihood of survival.”

  Theo paused again for a breath.

  “Again, I report the loss of Pilot Govans and ship Beeslady due to hostile action. Ship Bechimo requests Guild guidance on dealing with the remaining navigation hazard, as we lack reasonable means or desire to perform a salvage operation.”

  There was chatter in the background, including an ongoing rant against Eylot, Eylot Command, the ships involved in the interdiction, the pilots of the ships, the crew of the ships, the parents, children and spouses of the pilots, the citizens of Eylot . . .

  “Pilot Waitley.” This voice was familiar, but it wasn’t Slayn. “Peltzer here, Codrescu Guild Command. We acknowledge your report and advise that no additional data feed on Beeslady is necessary, and in fact, any more may be inflammatory!”

  Theo certainly understood that; Bechimo had provided targeting information for the ship that had killed Beeslady, but Clarence’s emphatically signed no! no! no! no! echoed her own grim understanding: if Bechimo fired, Codrescu and most of the ships and people there would be put in immediate deadly peril.

  “Our current understanding is that the debris cloud is dispersing and is not an immediate hazard to the station, though it is a potential hazard to lower orbits,” said Peltzer. “As we are not currently expecting shipments from Eylot, it’s best not to add to the cloud unless you can achieve complete vaporization.”

  Joyita looked up from something he’d been studying below the gain of Screen Six.

  “Vaporization may easily be achieved, Pilot,” he murmured, for pilots’ ears only.

  Well, that was information Theo wasn’t sure she wanted—and certain that she didn’t want to share with Eylot. She shook her head.

  “Hear you, Codrescu,” she told Peltzer. “If it meets with your approval we’ll just let be and return to station-keeping.”

  To Bechimo—“Cut the data feed to the station, please. Then give me a course back to the relative position we enjoyed when we arrived at the station. And, please, not so hectic as the one that got us here.”

  “Bechimo,” said station, “if possible, a face-to-face report may be in order.”

  “Under advisement, will confirm on docking,” she answered, still looking at the screens.

  She shook herself, and looked down at her board.

  “Bechimo, log what you must, but I’d like the larger situation map back, if you please.”

  “Yes, Pilot.”

  She looked up—and over, feeling her copilot’s gaze on her.

  Theo sighed. “Clarence, she knew my name. She was just living her life, and she knew my name, and now—she’s just gone. Bad gone.”

  Before Clarence could reply, heat rose in her.

  “It’s a good thing I’m not Liaden, Clarence, else that whole damned planet down there would owe a Balance!”

  His lips parted, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he gave her one of those seated bows, no mere nodded yes, but full of respect, and understanding.

  That took the heat from her, and she added, drained, the realization, “Someone owes Balance on her, anyway, don’t they? This is one we can’t just let go.”

  — • —

  Kamele’s second-favorite place aboard Hoselteen was the garden room.

  It was not, to be sure, a very large space, but what there was—with the exception of the thin path, and a few artfully placed benches—was completely given over to plants, the gaudier, the better.

  Vines climbed the walls—green-black leaves giving a glossy background to brilliant flowers no larger than Kamele’s thumb, while other climbers gave all their energy to producing frivolous, nodding blooms, and still others bore among their variegated leaves, the tiniest and most perfect of pale purple stars. Terrace boxes strained to contain wanton heaps of flowers, and the tree that spread its branches low and wide from an artistically off-center plot, held dozens of hanging flowerpots in its avuncular embrace.

  Here and there, a flower had dared to take root in the meager margin of dirt between the paving stones. Kamele made it a point to avoid those gay adventurers as she perused the slender pathway.

  “Another delightful corner!” her companion murmured, gazing about him in what Kamele suspected might be astonishment. “Truly, Professor, you are a connoisseur.”

  She laughed and shook her head.

  “No, only a woman who likes her routine, and who misses her home.”

  She stepped out on the path, walking as near as possible to the edge, in order to give Ban Del ser’Lindri room to walk at her side.

  As they were both of a slender disposition, they were able to amble along companionably, their ankles occasionally brushed by blossoms seeking escape from their container.

  “I have a fondness for flowers, myself,” Kamele’s companion said, looking about him. “When I was a boy, my grandmother made her garden available for tour every year, during the Garden Days. There was a pocket planting! I am persuaded you would have heartily approved.”

  “As small as this one?” Kamele asked.

  “Oh, very much smaller—the merest whisper of a plot, I assure you! She had, however, adopted much the same mode as we see here. The terraces, six to a side, and the vines growing up on wires behind, the ground covered in star moss. In the center, a bench made from bent wood, and a table from a polished stump. One might sit there for days and never mark the passage of time, or conceive the least need to be anywhere else.”

  “It sounds delightful,” Kamele said. “I hope you still enjoy it.”

  He cast her a conscious glance, as if startled to discover himself speaking so freely with someone who was, after all, the merest acquaintance.

  “Well,” he murmured, with a small smile. “My grandmother many years ago embraced the long peace. I believe her garden has been let to go fallow, there being none of us younger who cared to tend it.”

  “Not yourself?” Kamele asked, pausing to look up through the branches of the tree, each carrying their brilliant burden of flowers. She took a deep breath, savoring the sweetness of the air.

  “Alas,” he murmured from her side. “I am home too seldom.”

  She looked down at him. “Perhaps when you’re done traveling, and go home to settle down, you’ll revive the garden.”

  He smiled.

  “Why, perhaps I shall, Professor. Who, after all, can predict the future?”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Codrescu Station

  “Pilot, it’s good of you to come.”

  Arndy Slayn offered her a worried half-smile and a Terran-style handshake in welcome.

  Theo took the handshake; it was firm and warm and human, as was the the eye contact.

  “Couldn’t stay away,” she said, mustering a smile from somewhere and hoping it looked better than it felt.

  “Who could? Come in, come in. Guild Master Peltzer needs a couple things straightened up, if you could.”

  She nodded and stepped past him, relieved that the hatch was sealing her armed escort in the reception area.

  Slayn turned with a wave, and she followed him, heading for the interior room where she could see Guild Master Peltzer and Tugwhomper Bringo, both wearing headsets, and working screens open before of them.

  Before she achieved the sanctum—in fact, just as she was passing the patch of verdant greenery that had in the past been a norbear
residence—there came a sudden furry brown and orange streak-and-squeak from inside the minijungle, and a simultaneous apparition of knee-high rusty grey norbear royalty from within Peltzer’s offices—Podesta and her grandsire, Hevelin.

  Despite herself, Theo smiled, and managed to continue her walk, while Slayn diverted the younger norbear, shooing her back to the front room, and Hevelin marched gravely at Theo’s side, as if personally escorting her to the Guildmater’s presence.

  Bringo, she saw now, was crying; his screen replaying the empty interior of Beeslady laid open to space. Theo swallowed. Her breath came short; she wanted to grip something until she crushed it. Bringo’s screen changed to a view of deepspace. The displayed coords were familiar, and she could see the distant tiny spot that was Bechimo, still in the when before his Jump in to station.

  Bringo looked into Theo’s face, struggling to make his jaws break out of the red-faced rigor that kept his sobs within. He made a hand motion acknowledging her presence, and a seminod that turned into a bow, which in turn did something she wasn’t sure of, except that it freed his tongue from the prison of his mouth so he could lick his lips, and then speak.

  “Thank you for trying, Pilot. Space love you for trying! I knew it was bad when she called for luck, you know, because she was always explaining that you didn’t need luck if you planned and remembered. It was all about planning and remembering, for her. Damned if I know how that thing held together for so long anyway—it ought to have fallen apart twenty Standards ago. So flimsy the shot went right through it . . .”

  “But I didn’t help!” Theo protested. “I was too late.”

  “You went, you went—and it could’ve been you’d been quick enough, or she’d released in time. You tried. Space love you, you cared.”

  He grabbed his left hand with his right, then, pulling his hand forcefully away from the replay button. He nodded at the screen, inviting her to look.

  “See—there you go then, change of attitude . . .”

  Theo watched the image interestedly. Bechimo had done some preshift braking, and added a tiny bit of rotation, rotation that brought them in with the right attitude to fit into the clear spot in Codrescu’s cloud.

  The dot on the screen just faded out, then . . .

  Bringo sighed, shook his head, and unclenched his hands from each other. He looked down, as if to make sure he’d really let go, then looked to the big live screen, where Bechimo was docked, petite and innocent against the station’s bulk.

  Bringo looked up into her face again.

  “Not a Master Pilot, me,” he said. “Just a Third who made bare Second, with enough trips in my pocket to know I’m never for First, and that Second’ll wear me to nubs, if I sat reg’lar. I’d’ve said that there couldn’t be done, but math never was my strongest glide . . .”

  Before Bringo could continue, Peltzer stood, waving Slayn toward a seat at the same time he gave Theo an actual salute.

  “That’s Master work and beyond, I’m thinking, Waitley, getting in here without a ripple. Last time I saw you—last time not all that long ago—you were still doing school flying. Now look at you, flying your own line and on a Korval contract. Just hope you haven’t wasted it all here: Eylot’s bosses are iffy bastards with no sense in their heads and trigger-happy, if ever I saw it. They want to make everybody do stupid things—on both sides!—I’m ready to disown them all, and the whole mess dropped into my lap.”

  He’d rushed this in a lump, giving Theo a chance to scrubble Hevelin’s thinning fur with cat-taught effectiveness, right behind his ear. The norbear raised his arms and grabbed her forearm, and she helped him boost himself until he was on her shoulder, his head a handspan from the low ceiling.

  “Goma Chang’s no better than Eylot—we’d still have Beeslady about if they hadn’t decided to get fancy. Been trying to work out something with the ground, Chang’s used up three-quarters of my talking with one stupid move.”

  Peltzer flapped his hands, wearily. “Sit, everybody, sit.”

  Theo did, taking a boardless seat, feeling Hevelin shift quietly as she did so. He was pulling her hair—no, he was combing it with his fingers, touching that Healer-favored place that should have scarred in one of her fights on Anlingdin, touching her ear, letting his presence settle slowly upon her physically as well as in that subtle mind-touch that in most norbears was more hint and mood than thought.

  Peltzer nodded at Theo.

  “You’re just in; tell us the news. Who else is coming, and how far behind? Any chatter on the general news bands? Any—”

  Theo raised a hand, fingers signing hold.

  Peltzer closed his mouth. He and Slayn and Bringo sat watching her, expectant, waiting to hear that the rest of their rescue was on the way.

  She shook her head.

  “They wouldn’t come,” she said slowly. “Not from Tradedesk. I—one of the pilots told me that somebody else would take care of it. That it wasn’t mine—or theirs—to do.”

  On her shoulder, Hevelin hummed, his physical presence shadowed by that weird thread of internal watching. He patted her hair, as if to calm her.

  Bringo looked at Slayn, Slayn looked at Peltzer. Theo tried to remember when she’d seen three grimmer-looking men together in the same room.

  “Well, there.” Peltzer sighed, and shook his head. “We’d got our hopes up, I guess, with you flying the Tree-and-Dragon. Thought maybe you’d been sent ahead special. Tree-and-Dragon has a history with pilots-in-peril.”

  Theo took a breath

  “No,” she said, carefully. “No one from Korval sent me.”

  There was a pause that felt way too long before Peltzer nodded.

  “It was good of you to come, Pilot. We appreciate the quick response. The Guild takes note.”

  Theo licked her lips.

  “Is there an . . . evacuation planned?” she asked.

  “Eylot’s talking surrender, but I’m telling you, I think evacuation’s going to be our single option. Especially now this has happened with Beeslady. They can’t be wrong, now, and so they’ll push harder. And sad to say, this ain’t the first time they shot ships out of the sky. We got a report from Haltermole Air, before Eylot cut us out of the comm lines. Two routine lifts targeted by Eylot Command. Example, we guess. The pilots didn’t appeal to the Guild—wouldn’t imagine they knew what hit ’em—and the action was on the wrong side for us to observe.” He sighed. “Saw the debris, though.”

  “How many?” Theo asked. “How many to evacuate?”

  Slayn laughed; raised his hands when Theo turned to look at him.

  “Easy, Pilot. No offense intended. Last count had us at two-ninety.” His mouth tightened. “Two-eighty-nine.”

  Bringo flicked a just in into the conversation, and tapped his headphones.

  “It’s coming in now, all channels. Eylot’s claiming they’ve taken out a major threat to their control. Further say they’ve launched an intercept mission on Goma Chang.”

  Slayn shook his head.

  “Stupid thing for them to say. Eylot’s got nothing close enough to the Jump point to intercept, unless they expect Chang to pay attention to that ‘sphere of influence’ they’ve been talking around.”

  Theo shook the image of the broken little vessel out of her head, and then mentally twisted an imaginary loop of lace, looking for something to solve, something useful to think about—

  “Smugglers Ace won’t work well for a ship that size, but they’re going to be six hours, twelve minutes and some odd seconds behind, at least, if Chang’s willing to take the near side of the equations.”

  Slayn looked up with a weak grin for Theo.

  “Eylot’s not got a commander willing to fly that way, I think, nor a ship that can do it if ordered. They’re all misplaced. I think Chang’ll just have to put up with a few hours of being yelled at before they’re gone.”

  Theo looked back to Peltzer, feeling Hevelin’s light touch petting her ear and neck as she did.

  �
��What will happen if the station surrenders?”

  Peltzer rubbed his hand over his face, wearily.

  “If they take the station, they’ll hold us all for ransom, is my guess, from what they’ve sent our team on-world so far. Eylot’s calling it fines. Extortion, I call it. That’s only for us lucky ones. The locals who are up here, anybody Eylot don’t like, I’m guessing they’ll be jailed and held as criminals and threats to the peace, unless Downstairs Command decides to go with executions, in order to make their point.”

  Bringo looked at Theo.

  “These folks are making examples out of pilots. Any excuse at all to leash ’em or lash ’em, far as I can see. We just lost one of ours, and they want the rest of us been living up here away. Dead’s as good as gone to them. None of us are safe who’s born there or been on Eylot. Not me, not you, not Short Wing, not none.”

  “Station?” A familiar voice came over the public band. Theo sat up, Hevelin grabbed her hair painfully.

  “Bechimo here, Station; Exec speaking. Don’t need my windows cleaned and not taking any taxi connects. Ship is on secure lockdown until First Pilot is back on board. We’ll be forceful if we need to.”

  Theo reached up, snatched Hevelin into her arms and came to her feet in the same motion.

  Easy, Bringo’s fingers told her. Talking all fine.

  She nodded tightly.

  “Idiots! Nobody’s supposed to be working that lane!”

  That was Peltzer. Slayn smacked a button on his board, and spoke into the mic. “No unauthorized movement off-station. Security, take note!”

  The echo of that had barely died, when a general security warning blared across the public band.

  In the midst of the noise, Theo felt a vibration in her pocket, saw Slayn jump for a hand-comm behind them on the counter. Juggling Hevelin, she pulled the comm free.

  “Waitley.”

  “Joyita reporting. As per standing orders we have conducted an arrival query and discovered a series of outstanding legal instruments regarding a crew member. First Pilot Theo Waitley has a variety of summons, actions, fines, and writs against her name, the most recent of which is a hold-on-sight order less than two Standard Minutes old.”