by Sharon Lee
“But I am not sure of which clothes there are. I have never seen the like of Tova’s . . . undersuit. And then she first and then the pair—they know such techniques as are amazing! I must practice! Did you know that. . . .”
Alara was now eating her fruit, with tea to hand; she was laughing, and in some haste she managed to say, “Perhaps those techniques are discussions for another time and place! Please, do not fail to eat!”
Diglon’s stomach agreed with that suggestion, and he rose now to gather his meat and tubers, more Yittle, and some juice. Having thought about the techniques Tova and Diam shared with him, he sighed. He recalled from training that Scouts frequently worked in teams, and wondered how much those teams might share . . .
Alara sat, brighter than she had the first time into the room, but as she glanced toward the window it was as if a shadow had fallen on her again, or duty pressed, and the edges of her smile filed off to seriousness.
“Do you know,” Diglon said around his food, “that Tova and Diam think that those clothes as you fit me with are such fine things that they are too expensive to have and wear. And Tova wished to know if I was married, on account of she said she could marry someone in three years, when she retires . . . especially someone who wears such nice clothes! And I—I am not a commander, I doubt that I can afford really fine clothes . . .”
Absently, considering the dressing of him, she said, “You deserve nice clothes, Diglon, and here there is opportunity, because several of the plants we are looking at make very fine fibers and very fine cloth as well as food. We can have samples made—you could even perhaps model them for Tova and Diam as a test!”
Diglon was much taken with that thought, and several others, and it was only after he realized that Alara had fallen quiet and withdrawn again that he returned to an earlier topic, and as he spoke he saw her turn to him, studying his face.
“If it is not my performance that is a difficulty, can you tell me what I may do to help with this difficulty? It affects how our little team works. I have been researching the flowers and the food, and there is so much that we can do—we can grow storage foods that will have the house eating well all year . . . but the work is important.”
He gathered his strength, dropped his voice to nearly a trench-whisper to insist.
“You must tell me how I can help—I will do extra work, I will do whatever I may, within the service I am sworn to yos’Phelium. If you can tell me how to help, you must!”
He realized he’d been leaning toward her, and that she’d been leaning toward him as well, her brown eyes riveted.
She was silent, and he was, which was awkward, and more so when they found themselves unalone, the silent Captain standing as she was a few scant paces away.
“Service to yos’Phelium, is it? Well,” she said in Terran, “yos’Phelium’s got lots of needs, and me and my other half, we’re pretty flexible. That’s why we have folks like dea’Gauss work with us, people who can spin a contract like one never been written and make it look all everyday and acceptable. Heck, that’s why we signed a contract to be Road Boss on an outworld.”
The Captain’s eyes were on him, firm, appraising. Diglon didn’t flinch, unsure what the contract talk was about, but sure it was important. She nodded, and said, “You’re a good man, Diglon Rifle.”
“Thank you, Captain,” he said from his seat.
She smiled and added, “You stand with us, right?”
“I do stand with you, of course!”
The Captain turned to Alara.
“He stands with Korval, Daughter of Silari. Just so you know.”
“I am informed,” Alara said, with a bow, and turned to him—
“Let us walk beneath the tree, Diglon,” she said to him, “and you and I will discuss this idea you have, of doing what you may to help. I believe we have many details to discuss!”
The Space at Tinsori Light
The first mention of Tinsori Light is in the heading preceding chapter twenty-nine of Scout’s Progress. The heading purports to be part of a beam-letter sent from Jen Sin yos’Phelium to his delm, complaining of the cost of repairs at, and impugning the reputation of the keeper of, the Light. It was meant to illustrate the use, and worth, of a Jump Pilot’s Ring, which figures in the storyline of the novel. We never intended to write a story about the Light, or the Keeper.
Well.
It turns out that Tinsori Light has a mind of its own.
Space is haunted.
Pilots know this; station masters and light keepers, too; though they seldom speak of it, even to each other. Why would they? Ghost or imagination; wyrd space or black hole, life—and space—is dangerous.
The usual rules apply.
Substance formed from the void. Walls rose, air flowed, floors heated.
A relay clicked.
In the control room, a screen glowed to life. The operator yawned, and reached to the instruments, long fingers illuminated by the wash of light.
On the screen—space, turbulent and strange.
The operator’s touch on the board wakes more screens, subtle instruments. A tap brings a chronometer live in the bottom right of the primary screen. Beams are assigned to sweep near-space; energy levels are sampled, measured, compared.
The clock displays elapsed time: 293 units.
The operator frowns, uncertain of what units the clock measures. She might have known, once. Two hundred ninety-three—that was a long phase. At the last alarm, it had shown 127 elapsed units; on the occasion before that, 63.
The operator turns back to her scans, hoping.
Hoping that it would prove to be something this time—something worthy of her. Of them.
The last alarm had been triggered by a pod of rock and ice traveling through the entanglement of forces that supported and enclosed them.
A rock pod . . . nothing for them.
She hadn’t even had time for a cup of tea.
The alarm before the rock pod—had been nothing for them, either. Though they hadn’t known that, at first.
They pulled it in, followed repair protocols, therapies, and sub-routines . . .
She’d had more than a cup of tea, at least—whole meals, she’d eaten. She’d listened to music, read a book . . . but in the end there was nothing they could do, except take the salvage and ride the strange tide away again into that place where time, all unknown, elapsed.
The scans—these scans, now—they gave her rock, and mad fluctuations of energy. They gave her ice, and emptiness.
There ought to be something more. Something more, worthy or unworthy. The geometry of the space about them was delicate. The alarm would not sound for nothing.
The scans fluttered and flashed, elucidating a disturbance in the forces of this place. Breath-caught, the operator leans forward.
The scans detected, measured; verified mass, direction, symmetry . . .
The scans announced . . .
. . . a ship.
Any ship arriving here was a ship in need.
The operator extended her hand and touched a plate set away from all the toggles, buttons, and tags that attended to her part of their function.
She touched the plate. And woke the Light.
This, thought Jen Sin yos’Phelium Clan Korval, is going to be . . . tricky.
Oh, the orders from his delm were plain enough: Raise Delium, discreetly. Deliver the packet—there was a packet, and didn’t he just not know what was in it. Discreet, the delivery, too. Of course. Delivery accomplished, he was to—discreetly—raise ship and get himself out of Sinan space, not to say range of their weapons.
Alive, preferably.
That last, that was his orders to himself, he being somewhat more interested in his continued good health and long-term survival than his delm. Package delivered was Korval’s bottom line; the expense of delivery beyond her concern.
In any wise, the whole matter would have been much easier to accomplish, from discreet to alive, if Delium wasn’t unde
r active dispute.
Not that this was the riskiest mission he had undertaken at the delm’s word during this late and ongoing season of foolishness with Clan Sinan and their allies. He was, Jen Sin knew, as one knows a fact, and without undue pride, Korval’s best pilot. Jump pilot, of course, with the ring and the leather to prove it.
Of late, he would have rather been Korval’s third or fourth best pilot, though that wouldn’t have prevented him being plucked out from the Scouts, which had been clan and kin to him for more than half his life. No, it would have only meant that he would have served as decoy, to call attention away from Korval’s Best, when there was a packet for delivery.
Well, the usual rules applied here, as elsewhere. If working without back-up, always know the way out, always carry an extra weapon, always know the state of your ship—and know that your ship is able and accessible, always be prepared to survive, and always remember that the delm was Captain to the passengers. Being Korval’s best pilot, his job was to fly where the passengers needed him to fly, at the direction of the delm.
Jen Sin sighed. Gods knew he was no delm, and thankful for it, too. Delms did math in lives, set in courses that would be flown by pilots not yet born. The delm decided who to spend, and when, for what profit to the clan. And just as well, Jen Sin acknowledged, that he wasn’t clever enough to do those sorts of sums.
His attention was occupied for a bit, then, dodging various busy eyes in orbit, and when he had time to think again, at his ease between two security rings, he found he was thinking of his team.
When he’d first come out from the Scouts, he’d thought of them often—the comrades closer than kin; the six of them together stronger, smarter, faster than any one of them alone.
Well.
There was a time when he could have gone back, delm willing, which she hadn’t been. Could have gone back, no questions asked, no accommodation required. Could have, then.
Now, what he had was couldn’t, though would still burned in his belly, even now that it was too late. His team had long ago moved past their grief, taken on someone else, shifted tasks and priorities until they were, again, a team—different from the team it had been.
And no room for Jen Sin yos’Phelium, at all.
“I would prefer the Starlight Room, if it is available,” he said, and passed over the identification for one Pan Rip sig’Alta, and a sixth-cantra, too.
The desk-man took both, bland-faced, scanned the card and returned it, the coin having been made to disappear.
“Sir, I regret. The Starlight Room is unavailable. May I suggest the Solar Wind?”
“The Solar Wind, excellent,” he murmured, and received the key-card the man passed to him.
“The hallway to the right; the second door on your left hand. Please be at peace in our house.”
That was scarcely likely, a certain tendency to unpeacefulness in perilous places being one of his numerous faults. Thus far, however, all was according to script. That, he told himself, firmly, was good.
Jen Sin entered the hallway, found the door, and used the key, stepping across the threshold immediately the door slid away, a man with no enemies, in need of an hour of solitude.
Two steps inside, the door already closed behind him, he checked—a man startled to find his solitary retreat already occupied.
This was also according to script—that there should be someone before him. Who, he had not been privileged to know. No matter, though—there were yet another few lines of code to exchange, which would in theory assure the orderly transfer of the packet tucked snug in an inner pocket of his jacket. And the safe departure of the courier.
Jen Sin allowed himself to display surprise before he bowed.
“Forgive me,” he said to the severe young woman seated by the pleasant fire, a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table before her. “I had thought the room would be empty.”
“Surely,” said she, “the fault lies with the desk. However, it seems to me fortuitous, for it seems I am in need of a companion other than my thoughts.”
All and everything by the script. He ought to have been reassured. He told himself that.
Meanwhile, acting his assigned part, he inclined his head formally.
“I am pleased to accept the gift of comradeship,” he murmured, and stepped toward the table with a Scout’s silent footsteps.
He paused by the doubtless comfortable chair, the back of his neck feeling vulnerable. There remained one more matched exchange, to prove the case. Would the child never speak?
She looked up at him, and smiled, wistfully, so it seemed to him.
“Please,” she said, “sit and share wine with me.”
That . . .
. . . was not according to script, and now he saw it—the anomaly that his subconscious, ever-so-much cleverer than he, had noticed the moment he had cleared the threshold.
The wine bottle, there on the table between the two glasses . . .
Was uncorked.
Jen Sin kicked; the table, the glasses, the wine becoming airborne. He slapped the door open, heard glass shatter behind him, and a high scream of agony.
He did not look back as he stepped into the hall, turning left, away from the foyer where the doorman presided. Deliberately bringing to mind the floor plan he had memorized to while away the hours alone in transit to Delium, he ran.
Less than a half-minute later, he let himself out a service door, wincing as the alarm gave tongue. Then, he was again running at the top of his speed, down the delivery corridor to the street beyond.
He had not surrendered the packet, his ship, or his life, though he had pretended to give up the two latter.
The man hidden on the gantry, justifiably proud of the shot that had dropped him at the ship’s very hatch, had taken the key from Jen Sin’s broken fingers, turned, and slapped it home.
Obediently, the hatch rose. Jen Sin, slightly less dead than he had appeared, lurched to his feet, and broke the man’s neck. The long rifle clattered to the landing pad, where he doubted it disturbed the gunman’s three associates. The body he left where it fell, as he staggered into the lock, and brought the hatch down.
He crawled down the short hallway; dragged himself painfully into the pilot’s chair. Gripped the edge of the board until his vision cleared. It hurt to breathe. Cunning thrust of the knife, there—he ought to remember it.
Time to go. He extended a hand, brought the board clumsily to life, his hands afire, no spare breath to curse, or to cry. The ’doc, that was his urgent need. He did know that.
Not yet, though. Not just yet.
He sounded a thirty-second warning, all that he dared, then gave Lantis her office, sagging in the chair, and not webbed in, and in just a while, a little while, only a while, a while . . . He shook his head, saw stars and lightning.
As soon as they gained Jump, it would be safe enough then, to tend his hurts.
An alarm screamed. He roused, saw the missile pursuing, initiated evasive action and clung to the board, to consciousness, in case his ship should need him.
So much for discretion, that was his thought, as Lantis bounced through lanes of orderly traffic, Control cursing him for a clanless outlaw, and not one word of sorrow for those firing surface-to-air into those same working lanes of traffic.
Korval either would or would not be pleased, though he had the packet. He kept reminding himself of that fact—he had the packet. The woman at the meeting room spoke the lines out of order, no sense to it. If she were false, why not just finish the script and take what was not hers? If she were an ally, and captured—then, ah, yes, then one might well vary, as a warn-away—
She had not survived, he was certain of that, and to his list of error was added that he had cost Korval an ally . . . and added another death to his account. He might almost say, “innocent,” save there were no innocents in this. He might, surely, say “dutiful,” and even “courageous” might find a place in his report—and Korval—he—was in her debt.
His side, where the knife had gotten past the leather, that was bad; his fingers left red smears on the board. The doc . . . but Lantis needed him.
They had almost reached the Jump point, when a ship flashed into being so close the proximity alarms went off. Jen Sin swore weakly at pinheaded piloting, and a moment later discovered that not to be the case at all.
The new ship fired; the beam struck directly over the engines.
The shields deflected it, and there came evasive action from the automatics, but the other ship was a gunboat, no slim and under-armed courier.
The Jump point was that close. Once in Jump space, he would have some relief. Enough relief that he might live through this adventure.
There really was no other choice; he had no more time on account.
Blood dripped from fingers remarkably steady as they moved across the board, diverting everything but the minimum amount necessary to function—from life support, from auxiliary power.
From the shields.
He fed everything to the engines, and ran for the Jump point, as if there were no gunboats within the sector, much less the ship that even now was launching enough missiles to cripple a warship.
They hit the point with too much velocity, too much spin; in the midst of an evade that had no chance of succeeding. He greatly feared that they brought missiles into the Jump field with them.
Jen Sin groped for and hit the emergency auto-coords, felt the ship shiver, saw the screens go gray—
And fainted where he sat.
The Light pulled and riffled the files from the ship. The operator kept one eye on its screen while she pursued her own sort of data.