by Sharon Lee
“Yes, Mother.” He stood, made his bow and moved toward the door.
He was nearly to the door when he heard her speak his name.
“Ma’am?” He turned to find her standing behind her desk. Slowly, she bowed the bow of honored esteem—
“Sleep you well, pilot of Korval.”
Breath’s Duty
Delgado, Leafydale Place
Standard Year 1393
IN HIS YOUTH, fishing had bored the professor even more thoroughly than lessons in manners, though he had more than once made the excuse of fishing a means to escape the overly-watchful eyes of his elders. Over time, he had come to enjoy the sport, most especially on Delgado, where the local game fish ate spiny nettles and hence could be hooked and released with no damage to themselves.
It was an eccentricity his neighbors, his mistress, and his colleagues had come to accept—and to expect. Periodically, the professor would set off for the lake region and return, rejuvenated, laden with tales of the ones that had gotten away and on-scale holograms of the ones that had not.
So it was this morning that he parted comfortably from his mistress, tarrying to share a near-perfect cup of locally-grown coffee with her—the search for the perfect cup and the perfect moment being among her chiefest joys—and with his pack of lures, dangles, weights, and rods set off for the up-country lakes.
The car was his other eccentricity—allowed however grudgingly by the collegiate board of trustees, who were, after all, realists. The work of Professor Jen Sar Kiladi was known throughout the cluster and students flocked to him, thus increasing the school’s treasury and its status.
The car was roundly considered a young person’s car. While fast, it was neither shiny nor new; an import that required expensive replacements and a regimen of constant repairs. Its passenger section had room enough for him, occasionally for his mistress, or for his fishing equipment and light camping gear. Not even the board of trustees doubted his ability to drive it, for he ran in the top class of the local moto-cross club and indulged now and then in time-and-place road rallies, where he held an enviable record, indeed.
The local gendarmes liked him: he was both polite and sharp and had several times assisted in collecting drunk drivers before they could harm someone.
His mistress was smiling from her window. He looked up and waved merrily, precisely as always, then sighed as he opened the car door.
For a moment he sat, absorbing the commonplaces of the day. He adjusted the mirrors, which needed no adjustment, and by habit pushed the trip meter. The sun’s first rays slanted through the windshield, endowing his single ring with an instant of silvery fire. He rubbed the worn silver knot absently.
Then, he ran through the Rainbow pattern, for alertness.
The car rumbled to life at the touch of a switch, startling the birds napping in the tree across the street. He pulled out slowly, nodded to the beat cop he passed on the side street, then chose the back road, unmonitored at this hour on an off-week.
He accelerated, exceeding the speed limit in the first few seconds, and checked his mental map. Not long. Not long at all.
HE GRIMACED AS he got out of the car—he’d forgotten to break the drive and now his back ached, just a bit. He’d driven past his favorite fishing ground, perhaps faster there than elsewhere, for there was a lure to doing nothing at all, to huddling inside the carefully constructed persona, to forgetting, well, truly, and for all time, exactly who he was.
The airfield was filled to capacity; mostly local craft—fan-powered—along with a few of the flashy commuter jets the high-born brought in for their fishing trips.
On the far side of the tarmac was a handful of spacefaring ships, including seven or eight that seemed under constant repair. Among them, painted a motley green-brown, half-hidden with sham repair-plates and external piping, was a ship displaying the garish nameplate L’il Orbit. The professor went to the control room to check in, carrying his cane, which he very nearly needed after the run in the cramped car.
“Might actually lift today!” he told the bleary-eyed counterman with entirely false good cheer.
As always, the man smiled and wished him luck. L’il Orbit hadn’t flown in the ten years he’d been on the morning shift, though the little man came by pretty regularly to work and rework the ship’s insides. But, who knew? The ship might actually lift one day. Stranger things had happened. And given that, today was as good a day as any other.
Outside the office, the professor paused, a man no longer young, shorter than the usual run of Terran, with soft scholar’s hands and level shoulders beneath his holiday jacket, staring across the field to where the starships huddled. A teacher with a hobby, that was all.
An equation rose from his back brain, pure as crystal, irrevocable as blood. Another rose, another—and yet another.
He knew the names of stars and planets and way stations lightyears away from this place. His hands knew key combinations not to be found on university computers; his eyes knew patterns that ground-huggers might only dream of.
“Pilot.” He heard her whisper plainly; felt her breath against his ear. He knew better than to turn his head.
“Pilot,” Aelliana said again and, half-against his own will, he smiled and murmured, “Pilot.”
As a pilot must, he crossed the field to tend his ship. He barely paused during the walk-around, carefully detaching the fake pipe fittings and connections that had marred the beauty of the lines and hidden features best not noticed by prying eyes. The hardest thing was schooling himself to do a proper pilot’s walk-around after so many years of cursory play-acting.
L’il Orbit was a Class A Jumpship, tidy and comfortable, with room for the pilot and copilot, if any, plus cargo, or a paying passenger. He dropped automatically into the copilot’s chair, slid the ship key into its slot in the dark board, and watched the screen glow to life.
“Huh?” Blue letters formed Terran words against the white ground. “Who’s there?”
He reached to the keyboard. “Get to work!”
“Nothing to do,” the ship protested.
“You’re just lazy,” the man replied.
“Oh, am I?” L’il Orbit returned hotly. “I suppose you know all about lazy!”
Despite having written and sealed this very script long years ago, the man grinned at the ship’s audacity.
“Tell me your name,” he typed.
“First, tell me yours.”
“Professor Jen Sar Kiladi.”
“Oho, the schoolteacher! You don’t happen to know the name of a reliable pilot, do you, professor?”
For an instant, he sat frozen, hands poised over the keyboard. Then, slowly, letter by letter, he typed, “Daav yos’Phelium.”
The ship seemed to sigh then; a fan or two came on, a relay clicked loudly.
The screen cleared; the irreverent chatter replaced by an image of Tree-and-Dragon, which faded to a black screen, against which the Liaden letters stood stark.
“Ride the Luck, Solcintra, Liad. Aelliana Caylon, pilot-owner. Daav yos’Phelium copilot, co-owner. There are messages in queue.”
There were? Daav frowned. Er Thom? his heart whispered, and he caught his breath. Dozens of years since he had heard his brother’s voice! The hand he extended to the play button was not entirely steady.
It wasn’t Er Thom, after all.
It was Clonak ter’Meulen, his oldest friend, and most trusted, who’d been part of his team when he had been Scout captain and in command of such things. The date of receipt was recent, well within the Standard year, in fact within the Standard month . . .
“I’m sending this message to the quiet places and the bounce points, on the silent band,” Clonak said, his voice unwontedly serious. “I’m betting it’s Aelliana’s ship you’re with, but I never could predict you with certainty . . .”
“Bad times, old friend. First, you must know that Er Thom and Anne are both gone. Nova’s Korval-pernard’i . . .” Daav thumbed the pause but
ton, staring at the board in blank disbelief.
Er Thom and Anne were gone? His brother, his second self, was dead? Anne—joyful, intelligent, gracious Anne—dead? It wasn’t possible. They were safe on Liad—where his own lifemate had been shot, killed in Solcintra Main Port, deliberately placing herself between the fragging pellet and himself . . . Daav squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the horrific vision of Aelliana dying, then reached out and cued the recording.
“. . . Korval-pernard’i. The name of the problem is the Department of the Interior; their purpose is to eat the Scouts, among other things. One of those it swallowed is your heir, and I don’t hide from you that there was hope he’d give them indigestion. Which he seems to have done, actually, though not—but who can predict a Scout commander? Short form is that he’s gone missing, and there’s been the very hell of a hue and cry—and another problem.
“Shadia Ne’Zame may have discovered his location—but the Department’s on the usual bands—monitoring us. Listen to Scout Net, but for the gods’ sweet love don’t attempt to use it!
“Shadia’s due in any time and I’ll send a follow-up when she gets here. You’d scarcely know the place, with all the changes since your training.
“If you’ve got ears for any of us, Captain, now is when we need you to hear.” There was a pause, as if Clonak was for once at a loss for words, then: “Be well, old friend. If you’ve heard me at all . . .”
It ended.
Daav stared for a moment, then punched the button for the next message.
There was no next message. Days had gone by and Clonak had not followed up.
Daav shifted in his seat, thinking.
Desperate and under the shadow of a pursuing enemy, Clonak had found him. And Clonak had not followed up. Suddenly, it was imperative that Daav be somewhere else.
He flicked forward to the microphone.
“This is L’il Orbit, ground. I think I’ve got the problem fixed now. I’m going to be checking out the whole system in a few minutes. If I get a go, I’ll need you to move me to a hot pad.”
“Hot damn, L’il Orbit, way to go!” The counterman sounded startled, but genuinely pleased. “I’ll get Bugle over there with the tractor in just a couple!”
“Thank you, ground,” Daav said gravely, already reaching for the keyboard.
“Hello,” he typed.
“Go,” said maincomp.
“Complete run: Flight readiness.”
“Working.”
So many years. His brother and sister dead. His son in trouble. The son he wasn’t going to be concerned with after all. And somehow the Juntavas was mixed around it.
Scout Commander. Daav sighed. Scouts were legendary for the trouble they found. The trouble that might attend a scout commander did not bear thinking upon.
The ship beeped; lights long dark came green. He touched button after button, longingly. Lovingly.
He could do it. He could.
He had left all those battles behind.
“Ground,” he said into the mike, the Terran words feeling absurdly wide in his throat, “this bird’s in a hurry to try her wings. Everything’s green!”
“Gotcha. We’ll get you over to the hotpad in a few minutes. Bugle’s just got the tractor out of the shed.”
Daav laughed then, and laughed again.
It felt good, just the idea of being in space. Maybe he could talk to some of the pilots he’d been listening to for so long—He grimaced; his back had grabbed.
Right. Easy does it.
And then, recalling the circumstances, he reached to the keyboard once more.
“Hello,” he typed. “Weapons check.”
“I’M NOT A COMBAT pilot, either, Shadia. I think we did as well as might be expected!”
The gesture in emphasis was all but lost in the dimness of the emergency lighting.
“I swear to you, Clonak—they’ve murdered my ship and if they haven’t killed me, I’m going to take them apart piece by piece; and if they have killed me I’ll haunt every last one of them to . . .”
The muffled voice went suddenly away and the mustached man raised his hand to signal the separation. The woman shrugged and braced her legs harder against the ship’s interior, bringing her Momson Cloak back in contact with his as they sat side by side on the decking behind the control seats, using the leverage of their legs to hold them in place in the zero-g.
“We bested them,” the man insisted. “We did, Shadia—since the fact that we’re somewhere argues that their ship isn’t anywhere.”
There was a snort of sorts from within the transparent cloak. “I’m familiar with that equation—my instructor learned it from the Caylon herself! But what could they have been thinking to bring a destroyer against a ship likely to Jump? You don’t have to be a Caylon to know that’s . . .”
Her gesture broke the contact again and the near vacuum of the ship’s interior refused to carry her words.
Shadia leaned back more firmly against Clonak’s shoulder, the slight crinkle sounding from the Cloak not quite hiding his sigh, nor the crinkling from his Cloak.
She glanced at him and saw him shaking his head, Terran-style.
“Next shift, Shadia, recall us both to put on a headset. As delightful as these contraptions are, I’d like us to be able to converse as if we weren’t halflings in the first throes of puppy-heart.”
She laughed gently, then quite seriously asked, “So you think we’ll have a next shift, at least? No one on our trail?”
He sighed, this time turning to look her full in the face.
“Shadia, my love, I doubt not that all is confusion at Nev’Lorn. The bat is out of the bag, as they say, and I suspect the invaders have found themselves surprised and disadvantaged.”
He nodded into the dimness, eyes now seeing the situation they’d left behind so suddenly when the Department of the Interior attacked them.
“The ship most likely to have followed was closing stupidly when last we saw it—closing into your fire as well as the sphere of the Jump effect of the hysteresis of our maneuvers. They would have been with us within moments, I think, if they had come through with us.”
Clonak gestured as expansively as the Cloak allowed.
“Now—what can I say? We’ve come out of Jump alive. If we’re gentle and lucky the ship may get us somewhere useful. Perhaps we’ll even be able to walk about unCloaked ere long; with hard work and sweat much is possible. You will remember to tell people that you’ve seen me sweat and do hard work when this is over, won’t you, Shadia? When our present situation is resolved—then we will consider the best Balance we might bring against these murderers.”
He sighed visibly, used the hand-sign for “back to work,” with a quick undernote of “sweat, sweat, sweat.”
She smiled and signaled “work, work, work” back at him.
Clonak stretched then, unceremoniously lifting himself off the floor and away from Shadia. Steadying his feet against the ceiling of the vessel he brought his face near hers and touched left arm to left arm through the Cloaks.
“Shadia, I must give you one more rather difficult set of orders, I’m afraid. I know my orders haven’t done much good for you lately, but I pray you indulge me once more.”
With his other hand he used the scout hand-talk, signifying a life-or-death situation.
She nodded toward his hand and he closed his eyes a moment.
“If you find that, against chance, we are brought again into the orbit of the Department of the Interior, if they verge on capturing us—you must shoot me in the head.”
He flicked an ankle, floated accurately to the floor again, belying the cultivated image of old fool, and he looked into her startled, wide eyes.
“Just dead isn’t good enough, Shadia; they’ll have medics and ’docs. Do you understand? There must be no chance that they can question me. They cannot know what I know, and they cannot know who else might know it.”
Clonak tugged gently on her elbow, and she u
ncurled to stand beside him, stretching herself and near matching his height.
His hand-talk made the motion demanding assent; she responded in query, his in denial . . . and he leaned toward her until Cloaks touched again.
“I know, Shadia, neither of us were raised to be combat pilots. It is thrust upon us both as scouts and as pilots. My melant’i is exceedingly clear in this. I can tell you only one thing right now—and little enough it is to Balance my order, I know.”
Her hand signaled query again and his flicked the repeated ripple that normally would signify a humourous “all right, all right, already . . .”
“What I know,” he said into his Cloak and through the double crinkly life-skins to her ears, “is the name of the pilot they are afraid of. And having made this one pilot their enemy, they now must be the enemy of us all.”
THE MATH WAS easy enough, if not quite exact. There were a dozen Momson Cloaks per canister; each of the two installed canisters had eleven left. There were two replacement canisters, and a backup. The emergency kit built into each of the conning seats held a pair of individual Cloaks, as well. Out of an original eight eights to start there were now five dozen and two to go.
Math is a relentless discipline: It took Shadia down the rest of the path almost automatically. Each Cloak was designed to last an average-sized Terran just over 24 hours—Momson Cloaks were, after all, standard issue devices on cruise ships plying the crowded space of the Terran home system—but they were conservatively rated at 30 hours by the scouts.
Perhaps 40 Standard days then, Shadia thought, if usage was equal and none of the units bad, if . . .
She saw the flutter of a hand at the edge of her vision as Clonak signaled for attention; he leaned forward and they touched shoulders as he spoke:
“Not as bad as all that, Shadia—we’ve got some ship stores too, and the spacesuits themselves, if need be, and there might be a way to . . .” She glanced at him sharply and he pointed toward her right hand.