Crystal Soldier

by Sharon Lee

  At the edge of the console he paused, looked—and moved on, his near hand rising to wave her along behind.

  She followed, not liking it, but not inclined to let him go on alone. He'd put himself out for her, coming into the alley and taking care of the second hunter, for which act of lunatic generosity she owed him. Even though she'd had the situation under control.

  She paused, looked around the edge of the console—and wished she hadn't. The master of the dining room was crumpled into an improbably small ball on the floor, his formal tunic dyed with blood, a wide ragged gash in his throat.

  Swallowing, she moved on, past the wadded up curtain, which had been ripped down from its hanging over the doorway, and caught up with Jela just inside the hall.

  The third room down was nasty—eight identical corpses displaying the remains of various unsavory forms of persuasion. Two wore formals, while the rest, by their clothes, had been kitchen workers. It was well-lit, unfortunately, and Cantra slipped the lightstick into her public pocket.

  Jela swore, quietly and neatly. Cantra held her peace, not thinking immediately of anything she could usefully add to the motion.

  "All Batchers," she said after he'd prowled a bit and had a chance to work off some of his bad mood. "No guests."

  "There are other rooms," he answered, and she sighed, jerking her head at the curtain.

  "So we'll check 'em out," she said and after a heartbeat or two he brought his chin down, which she took for 'will do.' She swept the curtain back.

  Most of the other rooms were found to be empty and intact, saving the one that held what had once been a woman of some substance. A neat hole had been made in the center of her forehead; the skin 'round the hole was just a little burnt, which you'll get with your pin lasers.

  This time, Jela didn't say anything, just went down to a knee and started going through pockets, quick and efficient. Seeing that he had the way of it and didn't need her help, Cantra set herself to guard the hallway, the curtain hooked back just a bit, so he'd be able to hear if she shouted.

  The hallway was dim and quiet—not much different than it had been earlier in the day. If you didn't know that one of the rooms held eight Batcher bodies, and the one behind her was occupied by—

  There was a noise—a very small and stealthy noise—from the left, where the hall ended at a flat white wall, barely two dozen paces from Cantra's position. She frowned, staring at the area and finding nothing to see, save the hall and the wall.

  She'd almost convinced herself that the noise had come from behind, inside the room where Jela was relieving the woman's body of care, when the sound came again, slightly louder this time, and from the same area.

  Carefully, she moved forward, slipping the still-glowing lightstick out of her pocket, holding it high in the hand not occupied by her weapon.

  The section of hall she went through was certifiably vacant. The wall at the end was white and blank. She went over to the left, where end wall met side wall, lifted the lightstick high and began to scrutinize the situation.

  She hadn't got far along in the scrutiny when the noise made itself heard again—well over to the right and sounding a shade impatient. Cantra moved down-wall, light still high and illuminating nothing but wall, flat, white, seamless, and—

  Not entirely seamless.

  It took a professional's eye to see it, but there it was—a thin line along the blank face of the wall, shimmering a little in the lightstick's blue glow.

  The noise came again, just beyond the tip of her nose, a scratching sound—fingernails against plazboard, maybe. Mice.

  She marked the position of the line, slipped the 'stick away, unsealed another hidden pocket and pulled out a ring of utility zippers. Frowning, she fingered through the various options. The ring was a portable, o'course, armed with the most common polarizers. If this particular hidey hole were sealed with anything out of the way, she'd need the full kit from her ship. Still, it was worth a—

  "Pilot Cantra?" His voice was barely louder than his breath, warm against her ear. "What do you have?"

  "Stashroom," she said, keeping her eyes on the line, fingers considering the merits of this zipper, the next, a third . . .

  "Think I've got a way in," she said, weighing the third zipper in her hand. "Somebody inside, is what I think." Her fingers decided in favor; and she nodded to herself.

  "Cover me." She slipped her gun into its pocket and activated her chosen tool, reaching up to run the needle-nose down along the line in the wall. The zipper's path was marked by a gentle peel, as if the skin of the wall were rolling back from an incision.

  Cantra knelt on the tile floor, brought the tool down until its nose caught on the second line, followed that one along parallel to the floor, snagged on the third and went up again, the skin of the wall rolling up in earnest now, almost as high as her waist. Big enough for someone to come out of, if they were so minded. Big enough, absolutely, to shoot through. Big enough—

  A body leapt through the opening, curling as it hit the floor and going immediately into a somersault, showing a flash of green among a blur of pale arms, pale hair, pale tunic.

  Jela extended an improbably long arm, caught the Batcher by the back of the tunic and hauled her—for it happened to be 'her', Cantra saw—up, feet not quite making contact with the floor, which didn't stop her from squirming and twisting.

  Cantra slid her weapon free and pointed it. The Batcher stopped struggling and hung limp as a drowned kitten in Jela's grasp.

  "Pilots," she gasped. "This humble person is grateful for your aid."

  "Right," Cantra said, and looked to Jela, giving him leave to ask what he would with the quirk of an eyebrow.

  He was silent for a moment, then spoke to the Batcher. "You gave us warning earlier in the evening, eh?"

  "Yes, Pilot," the Batcher said submissively, which could as easily be truth or a lie told in order to placate him.

  "Tell me," Jela said, inexorably calm. "What you said, to warn us."

  The Batcher hesitated, then raised her face, though she stopped short of actually meeting Jela's eyes.

  "Walk safely," she whispered.

  "Why?" Cantra asked, which might not've been the question Jela wanted the answer to next, but which had damnall bugged her since it happened.

  The Batcher licked her lips. "There were those who had taken the other pilot," she whispered, "as he was about to enter our establishment. I saw this. They were many, he was one. I thought to warn pilots that there was danger in the streets. The master—" Her voice caught. She took a hard breath and hung her head again. "The master did not forbid this. The master said, hoodlums in the streets are bad for business."

  There was a short silence, then Jela said. "I'm going to put you on your feet. I expect you to stand and answer the questions this pilot and I ask you. Try to run away and I'll shoot you in the leg. Am I understood?"

  "Pilot, you are."

  "Good." He set her down. She stayed put, head hanging, gloved hands limp at her sides.

  "Tell us what happened here," Jela said.

  She swallowed. "They came here during the slow hour. Uno, at the desk—he had time to hit the emergency bell. Many of us ran, but in the kitchen, they were prepping for the busy hours upcoming and were caught. Also, the master—the master had been in the wine cellar and did not hear the bell. When we came to this floor, they had already killed Uno and captured the kitchen staff. The master told me to run for aid, and I did try—but they were at all exits, even those not generally known. I came back and they were—they had killed the master and left her. I— I hid myself in the wall, but I could not open the secret door from the inside. And then you came."

  "I see," Jela said in a tone that conveyed that he might not actually believe everything he'd just been told. "Do you know—"

  Back toward the front of the building, there was a sound—a large, unfriendly, sound.

  "You know a way out?" Cantra snapped, not being in any way wishful of meeti
ng the people who had killed a pilot, eight Batchers and their owner—For what gain? she asked herself, then put away that wondering for another and less fraught moment.

  "Pilot," the Batcher said, "I do, if they are not deployed as before."

  "Go, then," Cantra snapped, over a second noise, louder and less friendly than the first. "We'll follow."

  The Batcher looked at Jela.

  "You can move now," he told her. "Lead us out of here."

  * * *

  THE STARLIGHT HOTEL sat on its corner, dark walls showing glitters and swirls of silver and pale blue deep inside, like looking out an observation port and seeing the starfield spread from one end of night to the other. Cantra was standing in the dim, recessed doorway of a closed dream shop. She'd been there for some time, just one shadow among many, watching the entrance to her lodgings. Jela and the Batcher were watching the back door, the Batcher having refused to be parted from the pair of them after they'd shaken the dust of The Alcoves off their boots.

  It was beginning to look like prudence was its own reward. Whoever had her linked with Pilot Jela only had a face, not a name. And certainly not the location of the lodgings, rented only hours ago with such high hopes. She gave herself a couple heartbeats for wistful consideration of those hopes, then shrugged it all away. Staying alive was more important, as Garen used to say, than staying sane. Not that Garen had been anything like sane, as far as Cantra had been able to observe. There was something about the Rim that was unproductive of sanity. It was the weird seeping in from the Deeps that did it—that'd been Garen's theory. Cantra's was simpler: Rimmers made Rimmers crazy.

  The past, again. Like she didn't have enough present to occupy her.

  Shaking her head, she slid out of the doorway and ambled down the walk, one eye on the Starlight. People continued to enter and exit, and there were no signs at all of anybody waiting at stealth.

  Directly across from the front entrance, she paused, then quick-walked across the street when the traffic thinned, and jogged up the wide steps. The door slid open and she stepped jauntily into the lobby, heading for the lift bank just beyond the desk.

  Abruptly, she swung to the side and approached the desk, fingering a flan out of her public pocket.

  "Change this for me?" she asked, slipping the coin across the counter.

  "Surely," the clerk said, and counted out a certain number of qwint and carolis. "Will there be anything else?"

  The guard on the lift bank was looking at her. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she swept the coins into her palm, and saw his lips move slightly, as if he was talking into an implanted talkie.

  "That's all, I thank you," she said to the desk clerk. She dropped the coins into her public pocket, turned and walked back toward the front door, not running, not hurrying, though she could feel the guard's eyes boring into her back.

  Out the door, walking calm, down the front stairs, with a little jog in the step, finally slipping into the crowd moving along the public way. At the corner of the building, she left the crowd and dodged into the shadows, heading for the back entrance.

  Very shortly thereafter, she was behind the generator shed, in concealment that was a bit thin for three.

  "Got it?" Jela asked, though he must've seen she didn't.

  "Abort," she said. "Watcher on the lift bank. He saw me and reported in. Nothing in the kit that can't be replaced." For a price. "Now what?"

  A small silence, then.

  "My lodgings," Jela said. "Then a strategic retreat."

  "If they're on me, they're on you," she argued. "Time to cut your losses."

  "There's something at my lodgings that can't be lost," he answered, and there was a note in his calm voice that she didn't find herself able to argue with. "Cover me?"

  "I can do that." Had to do it, he having performed that same service for her. She looked over to the Batcher woman, silent and attentive by the edge of the shed.

  "Time to go home," Cantra told her. "This is more trouble'n you want."

  "This humble person will remain in the company of the pilots," the Batcher said—a repeat of her earlier communication on the subject.

  "This humble person," Cantra said, sharp, "belongs to whoever's come into being master. Which ain't neither of us."

  The Batcher crossed her arms over her breast. "This humble person will remain in the company of the pilots," she said, making three on the evening.

  "It's her life," Jela said, rising up onto his feet.

  Technically not true. On the other hand, as long as neither of them damaged, killed, or moved her, the law had nothing to say to them.

  "Makes no matter to me," Cantra said. "We better go, though, before unwelcome company finds us here."

  "Right," said Jela and faded into the dark. "Follow me."

  * * *

  JELA'S LODGINGS WERE back toward the shipyards, in a plain boxy building formed out of cermacrete. The surface showed cracks and a few craters, which gave witness to its age. Inside, Cantra thought, it was probably more of the same—clean and spare. The showers would work, the beds would be sleepable; service and questions both minimal. Transient housing, that was all. She'd stayed in places just like it herself, more than once. She owned some surprise to find Jela quartered here, though. She had him pegged a couple notches higher up the food chain.

  In addition to the front door, the back door and two side doors, there were a good many giving windows, all rigged out with safety nets. Three bridges connected the hostel at varying levels to a larger building next door, which on closer inspection proved to be Flight Central, where those pilots who found themselves to be respectable went to register the news of their being on-port, and whether they was wishful of taking berth, or had a berth on offer. There'd be eatables and a local info office; scribes, brokers, moneychangers, shipwright, and honest folk of all stripe. She'd been in two or three like establishments, over the course of her career.

  Could be it made sense for Pilot Jela to bide close to work and news of work. She hadn't asked him where he was next-bound—and there was still that vexed question of what sort of pilot he might be—having somehow received the impression that the answer would've been an uninformative shrug of those wide shoulders.

  Which line of thought did produce an interesting question: Where was Pilot Jela going, once he had recovered his unlosable? She had the Dancer, the Batcher had her master's home, which she'd see sooner or later. But Jela? If he didn't have a berth, it was going to be hard going for him on Faldaiza Port.

  Which concern was none of hers. She was well out of it just as soon as the good pilot picked up his kit and was away. Which event she hoped would come about quickly.

  "So," she said to Jela, who had been quietly and intently regarding the building from his place next to her at the mouth of a convenient alley, the Batcher hovering behind them both. "How do you want to play it?"

  "I'd like you and our friend to wait here," he said slowly, like he was just now working out his moves. "I'll go by the Central's bar and see if any of my acquaintance can bear me company. Company or solo, I'll go in by one of the bridges, and by-pass any left to guard the lift bank, the desk or the call-clerk. Bridge access is limited to those who have a key."

  "They'll have set guards on the bridges, too," she pointed out.

  "Likely, but not proven. I'm counting on the guard at the bridge being less able than those at the more likely places."

  "Could get messy."

  He grinned, not without humor. "It could, couldn't it?"

  She gave him his grin back, and jerked her head at the building. "Coming out the same way?"

  "Depends on how many they are and how they're deployed. Might have to go out a window, though I'd prefer not to. There are a couple of interior routes that would serve me better, and I'll aim for one of them. What I want you to do is give me cover when you see me. If you don't see me in an hour, then it's probable you won't and you're free to strike for your ship."

  That was
cool and professional. She tipped an eyebrow at him. "You got an idea who's responsible for all this, I think."

  This time the grin was thinner. "I have too many ideas of who might be responsible. What I don't have is a reasonable way to filter them, and I'd rather not be used for target practice in the meantime."

  He sounded seriously put-out by recent events, for which she blamed him not at all, being just a little annoyed herself.

  "We got a problem of scope," she said, nonetheless. "Whoever's after having a chat with us thought enough of themselves to kill eight Batchers and a freewoman back at The Alcoves, not to say your piloting brother. The reason they're after me is because of you, not the other way around. If one of your ideas is more likely than another, I'd appreciate hearing it."

  He sighed and pushed away from the wall. "If anything comes to me, I'll let you know," he said. "An hour. If I'm not out, jet."

  He faded out of the alley. Cantra put a cautious eye around the edge of the concealing wall and saw him already well up the walk, one of a group of law-abiders moving purposefully toward Flight Central.

  She thought about swearing, and then didn't bother. Her curiosity bump was unrelieved, but she'd live. Once this business here was settled and she was back on Dancer, the game, whatever it was, ceased to be important. Faldaiza wasn't a regular stop, though it wasn't unknown, either. Whatever ruckus she was currently enjoying the fruits of would die out completely between tomorrow's lift and the next time she hit port.

  She hoped.

  Behind her, she was aware of the Batcher's quiet breathing.

  "You," she said, not gently.

  "Pilot?" The Batcher stepped forward to take Jela's place next to her.

  "You got a name?"

  "Yes, Pilot. This humble person is called Dulsey."

  "You heard what Pilot Jela said, Dulsey? He's figuring it to get dangerous hereabouts within the hour. Now's your best moment to scoot along home and make a bow to the new master."

  "This worthless one heard what Pilot Jela said, and what you yourself said," Dulsey answered in her inflectionless voice, "and understands that danger may soon walk among us. The new master will not easily forgive one who had been favored by the previous master and then allowed her to be slain."