A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume I

by Sharon Lee

  “I’m not a wizard, child. You were counting out loud.”

  Shadia rolled her eyes. It was true. She’d been waiting for the battery-powered gyroscope in the auxiliary star-field scope to stabilize with half her mind and with the other half she’d been doing math on her hand.

  She bowed carefully amid a sea-noise of crinkling. “Thank you for your notice,” she said formally, while her free hand chuckled out the sign for “why me?”

  His reply in finger-talk, also with the underlying ripple of a chuckle, was simply “Breath’s duty.” He pulled away, a rough-trimmed wire conduit clutched carefully through the transparent Momson Cloak, and floated toward the open overhead panel. Shadia likewise turned back to her task in progress.

  The ship’s tiny forward viewports were automatically sealed by Jump run-up; they were blind unless they could get power back to those motors or use the auxiliary scope to see straight away from the ship.

  And now the star-field scope was stable enough to run: Despite Clonak’s protestations, he’d managed to perform wizard’s work on the back-up electrical system and the device was ready to operate. It was not what one might hope to be using to determine one’s position after an interrupted Jump-run, but she’d used less in training.

  As she bent to the scope she sighed a breath—and then another. Breath’s duty, indeed. Every child on Liad was made by stern Delm or fond grandfather to memorize the passage, which had come virtually unchanged through countless revisions of the Code. Unbidden, portions came to her now, recalled in the awkward rhythms of childish singsong.

  “Breath’s duty is to breathe for the Clan as the Clan allows, Breath’s duty is to breathe the body whole, Breath’s duty is to plan for the Clan’s increase, Breath’s duty is to keep the Balance told, Breath’s duty is to . . .”

  Carefully, she adjusted the star-field scope. To be useful, she needed to recognize any of the several dozen common Guides—her usual choice was the brilliant blue-white Quarter main giganova—or find a star within disc-view. Disc-view, of course, was optimum. With the auxiliary scope even a basic scan could take a day.

  “Breath’s duty is to keep the Balance told,” she muttered, and noted the gyroscope’s base setting. There were a lot of degrees of space to cover, and time moved on.

  IT WAS L’IL ORBIT and not Ride The Luck that docked at Delgado’s smallest general-flight orbiting docks; and Professor Jen Sar Kiladi who made a series of transfers to and from accounts long held in reserve. The shuttle trip to the larger commercial center, as well as the various library connections and downloads, were made by a student invented some years before by the professor; and the tools purchased at the local pawn establishment were paid for, in cash, by a man with a brash Aus-Terran accent and super-thin gloves.

  “I’m here to fix your nerligig,” the little man told the morning guy behind the bar.

  “Ist broke?” the bartender wondered. The device sat in its place, motionless—but it was always motionless at this time of the day, local ordinance requiring the Solemn Six Hours of Dawn to match that of the spiritual city Querna on the planet below.

  “Repair order!” said the man, vaguely Aus, waving a flimsy in the air and lugging his kit with him. “I’m good, I’m expensive, and I’m on my night differential.”

  He looked like one of those semi-retired types: just the kind of guy who’d know how to keep an antique nerligig running.

  The bartender shrugged, waved the man and his tools toward the ailing equipment, and poured a legal drink into one glass and its twin into another then gave them both to the customer at the end of the bar.

  “Hey, asked for one drink—right?”

  “Solemn Six, bud! Can’t sell youse that much in one glass this time of the day . . .”

  The repairman shook his head, set up his tools, adroitly removed the wachmalog and the bornduggle from the nerligig, and waited patiently for the boss.

  The boss was a heavyset Terran, and he traveled today with three guards. He came in looking tired and his guards swept by, checking out the patrons, glancing at the bartender, reconnoitering the restrooms . . .

  It was the boss who saw the nerligig guy, professionally polishing one of the inner gimbag joints.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  The guy glanced at him out of serious dark eyes. “Time to do scheduled maintenance.”

  The boss grimaced, but gave the correct reply.

  “I don’t need nothing fancy today.”

  “Dollar’s greener when you do,” said the man, polishing away.

  “At’s awful old.”

  The repairman looked up, eyes steady—

  “I only come out at night, you know.”

  The boss looked at the bartender, sighed, and watched his guards stand importantly around the bar for a moment.

  “You cost me some help today,” he said finally, turning back to the nerligig guy.

  The man shrugged.

  “Good help is hard to find. Better you know before there’s a life in it.”

  The boss sighed again, and waved the repair guy toward his office.

  “C’mon back.”

  The office was sparely appointed; a working place and not a showplace. Daav took a supple leather chair for himself, nodding at its agreeability.

  The boss sat in his own chair, rubbed his face with his left hand and gestured at his visitor with his right.

  “What’s your pleasure?”

  Daav opened his hands slightly with a half-shrug.

  “Information. About that message . . .” The message that shouted the name of Val Con yos’Phelium to all with ears to hear, near-space and far. The message that had shaken him out of his professorial Balancing and brought him into the office of a Juntava, seeking news.

  The boss pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded.

  “Yeah, I figure every quiet hand in the universe will want to know about that. I think it’s the first time the damned ‘danger tree’ was really used . . .”

  Daav sat quietly, watching the man’s tired face. No effort to hide how he felt—Daav’s greeting, as old as it was, was one recognized by Juntavas on many worlds. The short form was: Help this person, he has a right to it. The person in question might be a retired sector boss, an assassin on the way to or from a run—or the whole charade could simply be a test of loyalty.

  “What do you need to know?” asked the boss. “What’s the aim?”

  “Everything you know. I am, let us say, a specialist in people. I can hide them and I can find them. As may be required. I’ll need the background as deep as it goes.”

  The boss man gave a snort.

  “I bet you can hide ’em. Standing in my own front room with a whole bag of equipment like you own the place and my guards probably can’t tell me the color of your hair or what kind of shoes you wear. Damn smooth . . .” He shook his head in admiration, sighed, and went on, looking straight at Daav.

  “Where we are is that there’s been—a change of administration. Some of this is official and some’s not . . .”

  Daav looked on with polite interest, no change on his face.

  The boss nodded. “Right. He was asking for it if anyone was, but anyhow, politics aside, we have a Chairman Pro Tem right now, seeing how the Chairman was knifed in his own office by a Clutch turtle.”

  Daav leaned forward a bit, cocking his head to one side in respectful query.

  “Me too! Not what somebody’d expect. A bomb maybe, poison, even just a quiet step-down ’cause somebody had the best of him after all—but no. A pair of Clutch turtles waltzed into his office, had an argument with him, and took him out.”

  The man’s gaze had strayed to his desktop; he looked up, frowning.

  “The official thing is—straight from Chair Pro Tem!—that there was a busted deal, resulting from a misunderstanding, and that the former Chairman had made the mistake of threatening a T’carais with a shell-buster.”

  “With the result that, in defens
e of his or her superior, a minion used a knife,” Daav murmured into the short silence.

  The boss looked impressed, but Daav continued. “Perhaps better for all concerned: Most turtles would merely have bitten his head off, or crushed his spine . . .”

  The boss blanched, but waved a hand and went on.

  “Yeah, well, could have been. Unofficial news is that this turtle crew had come to visit twice; got themselves locked into the Chairman’s office and cut their way out through the blast wall with a knife after busting about a thousand gems, and then he had the nerve to try a fast one. Apparently these turtles are the knife clan or something—famous. And by the time the blood’s cleaned up, the Chairman Pro Tem finds out the fuss is all about two people.”

  “That would be the individuals mentioned in the whisper for all worlds . . .” Daav suggested.

  The boss smiled wanly.

  “Yes, that’s them. The turtles—this is official!—claim them to be ‘a brother and sister of the Spearmaker’s Den’ who must be returned unharmed or self-declared free and safe.”

  Daav looked into the ceiling, momentarily lost in thought. When he looked back, the boss was reaching into a desk drawer for a candy.

  “What, may I ask, is the or?”

  The boss looked grim.

  “The or is that if they don’t turn up safe the Juntavas will be wiped out, starting at the top. This is a promise.”

  Daav leaned forward, raised his hand to his chin and rubbed it thoughtfully.

  “This is,” he said after a moment, “a very, very serious problem. No one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle lying. Certainly no one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle or clan breaking a promise. Even I might not be able to hide well enough if the Clutch knew me for an enemy.”

  The boss snorted again, apparently swallowing his candy whole.

  “Right. And so what I have going on, starting about the time you walk out the front door here, is a block-by-block search of every Juntavas holding on Delgado, looking for two of the damnedest trouble-makers you’ve ever heard of.”

  Daav, very interested, waved his hand, asking for more information.

  “Yeah, OK. One is a First-In Scout Commander! Good, right? Get in the face of somebody who can talk Clutch to the Clutch and just happens to have saved one from a dragon. You know, a nobody, a pushover. Then the other one is a Merc-turned-bodyguard, lived through Klamath and got on—and off!—Cloud.”

  Daav let out a low whistle. “Do you know how many people lived through Klamath?”

  The boss shrugged, tapped his desk. “That’s probably in my notes. I got more notes than you can stuff in a garbage can already about this.” He broke, searched his desktop, pulled up a flimsy image-flat, and flipped it, casually and quite accurately, to the man in the chair.

  Daav listened with half-an-ear as the boss went on—while his eyes measured the photos of his son and his son’s companion.

  “Getting off Klamath earns you a lifetime ‘I’m tough’ badge or something. But—this is where we come in—these two started a firefight, in broad daylight, I guess!—between the local Juntavas and the city police in Econsey, back there on Lufkit, just to cover their getaway after they robbed the boyfriend of the local boss’ daughter. Then, they managed to get off-planet while the place was under total lock-down, with everybody from the chief of planetary police down to the nightclub bouncer looking for them, and make a leisurely departure from Prime Station in a Clutch spaceship.”

  Daav continued to look interested, slowly shaking his head as he listened, still taking in the no-nonsense, rather ordinary appearance of both of the missing. A master mercenary who had survived Klamath might be just the person to balance a Scout Commander, he thought.

  “Story gets muddled about here,” the boss was continuing, “but somehow the local capo managed to grab them. Then he gets the news he can’t do anything to them. So he sets them off in a spaceship that’s been in some kind of a fight and can’t go nowhere. Word comes down to make sure these two are really in one piece and to hold ’em, pending the Chairman Pro Tem’s personal visit. He goes back . . .”

  Daav didn’t have to fake the laugh.

  “What could he have been thinking?” he asked. “To leave a—what was it, First-In Scout Commander?—in a spaceship and expect it not to go away?”

  The boss was nodding now and gestured with the piece of candy in his left hand.

  “You got it. Exactly how it was. They were gone, the ship was gone and ain’t nobody heard nothing about any of ’em since. So now I got to check Delgado and . . .”

  Daav raised a palm.

  “Please,” he said gently. “You mustn’t be overly concerned. You’ll want to do standard checks on passenger lists and such, but the people you are hunting are not likely to hide out on Delgado. Even if they’ve been here do you think a hardened merc and a First-In Scout are going to set themselves up as shopkeepers or bean farmers?”

  Before the boss could answer, Daav stood, demanding a suppleness from his body he did not feel.

  “I’ll need the name of the new Chairman, copies of whatever transmissions you may have, details of the former location of the missing ship—dupes of your images, as well—and I’ll be on my way. Also, I have some things for you . . .” He waved toward the back wall of the office and the bar beyond.

  “First, the taller of your security guards stole several of your bartender’s tips, and was helping herself to the packaged snacks. That can’t be good for your business.”

  The boss snorted. “Just color them gone. Hey, you’re good at what you do—but that don’t mean they shouldn’t have seen you!”

  Daav nodded agreeably. “Also, you’ll want to get an explosives expert in here. There’s a small package I disconnected and took out of the nerligig—it looks like it might have been connected about six or seven dozen years ago. It may no longer be dangerous, or it may be unstable. In any case, as I am sure you understand, I hesitate to take it with me.”

  The boss rubbed his forehead and nodded.

  “We’ll dupe your info for you—and in the meantime I’ll call in a specialist.”

  “Thank you,” said Daav and went back to the bar to put his tools away, all the while amazed that a phrase learned so long ago and so far away was still potent enough to make a Juntava jump.

  CABIN PRESSURE WAS at one-tenth normal, which should have been counted as good; it signified that Clonak’s work was paying off.

  Alas, Shadia did not much feel like cheering. She sat lightly webbed to the command chair, patiently doing hours of work by hand and eye that an online computer might do in a blink.

  Clonak had left her to the recognition search while he worked on what he called “housekeeping.” Housekeeping entailed using a small bubble-bottle to find the worst of the leaks and then seal them with the quick-patch kit.

  As for her work, so far she had only three possibles and one probable. Dust in the outer fringes of the Nev’Lorn cluster made some of the IDs difficult and she’d not yet found a near opaque patch or two that might also help her . . .

  “Shadia?”

  The sound reached her, distorted and distant.

  Clonak stood behind her, almost an arm’s length away, beckoning her toward a portable monitor hooked to a test-kit. With his other hand he seemed to be fighting a control.

  Indeed, the air pressure was building ever so slightly.

  Noting her spot, she locked the star-field scope; by the time she got to him he was using both hands on the control. He yelled at her again through the sack-like Cloak; she could barely hear him.

  “Please tell me what you see. I’m not sure this will work for long!”

  What she saw, besides Clonak wrestling with a wire-filled metal tube, was devastation. The grainy monitor was showing her what would normally be her Screen Five, inspection view.

  “The rear portside airfoils are gone,” she yelled, schooling her voice to the give the information as dispassionately as possible. “Ther
e is damage into the hull; I can see a nozzle—likely it’s one of the wing nitrogen thrusters, still attached to a hose—moving as if it is leaking.”

  Clonak shrugged, did something else with his shoulder, and the image shifted a bit toward the body of the ship.

  Shadia blinked, disoriented. The ship didn’t have a—Oh.

  “The ventral foil has been blown forward and twisted—shredded. The . . .”

  The image went blank as Clonak’s hands slipped on the tube; the Cloak vibrated with the buzz of his curse.

  Shadia continued describing what she had seen.

  “There’s no sign of any working airfoil components. There are indications of other structural damage. I can’t tell you about the in-system engines—the view was blocked by the ventral fin.”

  Clonak sat down hard.

  “That view was blocked by the ventral? Might be something left to work with if we can get some more power going . . .” His last few words were lost as he stared at the blank screen.

  “Clonak, I have a feeling that the ship is—bent.” Shadia bent close and said it again, this time touching Cloaks shoulder to shoulder.

  “Well,” he sighed. “That explains why we can’t budge the hatch.”

  They both were silent for a moment; Shadia was glad for the slim comfort offered by touching someone else, even through the plastic.

  The ship’s spine had taken some of the heat of the attack and the ship was out of true. The rear compartment, including the autodoc, the sleeping alcove, and about 60 percent of the food, was accessible only if they could force the hatch against the bend of the ship.

  “We have to assume,” Clonak said suddenly, “that we’re not airworthy past the hatch; obviously we won’t want to be trying any kind of atmospheric descent if we have a choice—Might be missing some hull, too.”

  He straightened a bit, leaned in to her and said, “Look again. I’ll see if I can force this to scan the other side!”