Liaden Universe Constellation Volume 3

by Sharon Lee

  Carnage was the word that came to her mind; and also the thought that there would be no identifying the failed source. There simply wasn’t enough left to support a forensic diagnostic. The smell of ozone was not completely gone, nor that of the antiseptic sprays they’d used on Vechi.

  She returned to the wagon, tapped up the main schematic screen and traced the power flow.

  The station operated with tertiary back-ups, only sensible in so vulnerable a habitat as a space station. She was pleased to see that the back-up had come online without a glitch and there had been no discernible disruption of service.

  So much was to the good. She opened another screen, logged the damage and created the work order for the rebuild. In plain truth, she was likely to draw that one, but right now she was Vechi, with Vechi’s orders to clear.

  She tapped the screen, bringing up the list of work orders. Anomaly resolution went to the top of a given roster-list, so this had been Vechi’s first stop on her shift. It glowed yellow on the screen—begun, but not logged as complete.

  Below was a long list of work orders, all patiently showing green—waiting for tech.

  Kara sipped from her tea-bottle as she created a ref-file, attached the open, incomplete, order to the rebuild order, raised her finger to tap the next task in line—and stopped, frowning.

  Vechi was the fifth tech injured in the line of duty. Had the others all been checking anomalies, too?

  In less than thirty seconds, she had the anomalies report open on one side of the wagon’s screen; on the other, the tech department’s injury report.

  The injured techs: Vechi, Mardin, Whistler, Harfer, and Gen Arb—and yes, each had been checking an anomaly report when they had been injured.

  Kara’s fingers were quicker than her thoughts. She called up the real-time functions, using her key for the big ops board, that she sat on rotation every eight Station-days.

  The wagon’s screen was too small to accommodate the whole function screen, but all Kara wanted to do was to set an alarm. That done, she opened up the next work order in-queue.

  About halfway through Vechi’s shift, Kara paused between jobs to file a manual schedule adjustment. There was, she reasoned, no sense going off-duty for one shift, only to have to report back for her regular work-shift. Best to just keep on, with the loan of Vechi’s wagon, and swap out her second shift for rest. That would get her two rest shifts in a row, and put her back onto her regular schedule.

  The system OK’d the change, which meant that Master Thelly was on maintenance himself, and would scold her the next time they met, per standard procedure.

  Content with her changes, Kara finished out Vechi’s shift, closed the list of completed work orders, signed in as herself and downloaded her own run of work.

  She was in Green-Mid-Forty-Five; her work started in Blue-Mid-Twelve, conveniently near. Kara regarded the change of venue as a break.

  She sipped tea as she walked, the wagon following. The best route to Blue-Mid-Twelve involved a shortcut through Orange, where the root of Ten Rod Two joined the station structure proper.

  And there she quite unexpectedly found Fortch, the pool pilot who had not yet mastered the station’s gravity, in front of the utility-core for the arm, an access hatch wide open, and several tools haphazardly sticking from his pockets and belt.

  “What are you doing in the tech-tunnels, Pilot?” she asked, using her tea-bottle as a pointer, her voice sharper than it ought to be, for truly, he could be temp-help, or—

  But if he was temp-help, where was his repair wagon? Where was his kit?

  Fortch seemed to feel himself at a disadvantage. He licked his lips.

  “Kara! I didn’t know you were working down here!”

  “And I didn’t you were working down here.”

  “Oh, well I am—working. Filling in. Just checking something out for Master Thelly, that’s all. There was a glitch on the screen and he asked me to—but wait, I need to talk to you about your license problem . . .”

  He was moving, as if trying to stay between her and the open hatch. Lights were on, and covers hinged back from equipment.

  Behind her, the anomaly alarm went off on the work wagon, and three things happened in a quick succession.

  Fortch jumped toward her, a spanner suddenly in his hand.

  Kara spun as if she were playing bowli ball, ducked under his outstretched arms, using the open tea-bottle to fend off the tool he swung down. There was a clang, the bottle was torn from her hand and spun away, splashing tea everywhere. Her spin continued as his lunge faltered; she came up behind—and pushed him away from her, hard as she could, toward the open utility room.

  He, inept in the station environment, skidded on the tea-splashed deck, arms pinwheeling now, half-fell and half-slid, snatched for his balance, cursing—and lost his balance altogether, striking his shoulder on the access door and crashing heavily into the room, arm up in a desperate and failing bid not to fall into the panels and wiring.

  There was a sharp snap and a dazzling flash, and he collapsed to the decking, unmoving.

  The door to the Station Master’s private office opened, and Kara stood up, preferring to meet her fate thus.

  “Tech ven’Arith, thank you for your patience,” the Station Master said gently, giving her a bow as well-meaning as it was meaningless. “You’re free to go.”

  She blinked at him.

  “To go?” she repeated. “Go—where?”

  “To your conapt, I’d say,” Master Thelly stuck in. “You got the next three shifts off—use ’em to sleep!”

  “But—” She looked among them until she found Orn Ald yos’Senchul’s face. “Fortch is dead.”

  “So he is, and that is unfortunate, since there were questions that various of us would have liked to ask him. Clearly, however, he was undertaking sabotage against the station and his efforts might have killed hundreds. Stopping him was of utmost importance—and stop him you did.” He inclined his head.

  Kara noticed that her hands were clenched. She opened them, and shook her fingers out.

  “But—why?” she asked. “Why was he trying to . . . harm the station?”

  Bringo, the Chief Tugwhomper, looked grave.

  “Had a drink wit’ the boy not so long ago,” he said slowly. “Shortenin’ it considerable, he told me he figured out how to get his paper, Eylot-side.”

  Kara shivered, suddenly cold.

  “By killing the station?”

  “Now, missy. Coulda just drunk too much coil fluid and talkin’ big. Cheer ‘imself up, like.”

  “There will be an investigation,” said the Station Master. “Might be something in his quarters will be helpful. In the meanwhile, Pilot ven’Arith, the lesson you’re to take away from you is that you acted in self-defense—properly acted in self-defense. If Fortch hadn’t had the main power bus to the arm open he’d be alive. I’d say the fatal mistake was his, not yours.”

  Orn Ald’s voice then, quick, comforting Liaden preceding a gentle bow between comrades.

  “The station is in your debt, Kara.”

  “That’s right, and we don’t aim to stay that way,” said Guild Master Peltzer. “There’s a reward for preserving environmental integrity. Understand, it’s not what any of us can call exact Balance—more like a symbolic Balance. Be as may, I reckon that reward’s gonna show up in your account.” He gave the Station Master a hard look, and that individual smiled.

  “Without a doubt, Guild Master. Without a doubt.”

  “That’s all set now,” said Master Thelly, firmly. “Kara—go get some rest.”

  “Yes,” she said, numb, but with a dawning sense of relief. She bowed a simple bow of respect to the group of them, and turned toward the door.

  As she stepped into the hall, she found Orn Ald yos’Senchul next to her.

  “Will you share a meal with me, Comrade, and allow me escort you to your conapt?”

  “Yes,” she said again, and considered him. “And you will t
ell me everything that the others didn’t want to tell me, won’t you Orn Ald?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said serenely. “I’ll do that.”

  Moon’s Honor

  In addition to their involvement in the events culminating in Crystal Dragon, we’ve written several stories about Lady Moonhawk, priestess of the Goddess, and Lute, an itinerant sleight-of-hand magician. “Moon’s Honor” was intended as the beginning of the Lute-and-Moonhawk novel we really wanted to write; it was the “chapters” part of a proposal package. Sadly, no publisher could be persuaded to take the novel on, and the partial languished on Sharon’s hard-drive from 1996 until early 2013, when we published it to Splinter Universe.

  THE MOON

  Caution, danger, error, disillusionment

  Out of the high country it drove him, lashing him through and around places where normally he would have tarried, displayed his skill, collected a coin, an egg, a cheese.

  At first he fought it, this vast and reasonless compulsion, though his master had always urged him to heed the lesser sendings he had experienced in the past.

  Those had never frightened him.

  This—this chilled his soul. So he fought, striving to bring his own will to the fore—and lost, as the compulsion moved him, puppet-like, down from the mountains where breath still showed frost at dawn and at sunset, into the high valleys and further, to the river plain itself, where spring was already blooming.

  He must reach Dyan City by full Moon. So little to know, when one was accustomed to being one’s own master. Certainly too little to keep him on his feet and traveling well into the night, with only the racing Hounds to light him. Far too little to raise him from his fireless camp at dawn’s first blush, walking again as he broke his fast from the dwindling supply of journeybread.

  The bread was gone by the time his feet touched the road to Dyan City, and he walked the last miles hungry, passing through the gates as they were closing for the night.

  It was Beltane Eve.

  The compulsion shoved him through the gate-market, past the rim of cheap inns and beer-rooms, through a ragged ring of houses, toward the city’s center.

  He hurried across the warehouse district, and a zone of painfully tidy houses, each with its own tiny garden spot; through the midpoint market and the streets of upscale inns; past shops and through wide cobbled streets faced by spacious houses where music and laughter spilled from walled and secret gardens. On and on his demon rode him, through odorous crowds, past perfumed pavilions, until he reached Goddess Square.

  There, facing the glory of Dyan Temple, at the very foot of Maidenstairs, with the Elder Hound just rounding the Eastern Tower—there, the compulsion left him.

  “Crone’s teeth!” An oath, though he was not in general a man who cursed.

  He swayed, so suddenly was he free, and his knees began to go. Teeth grit, he caught himself, determined that none of the Temple should see him kneeling and mistakenly bear him inside as a supplicant.

  His master had maintained that these incidents of compulsion were Goddess-sent, thus holy, and had adjured his apprentice to heed the sendings and obey them with grace.

  Sadly, the ’prentice had never been so sweetly devout as the master, and endured these moments of the Goddess’ favor with wariness, not to say dislike. Endured he had, however, and learned that a foretelling of gold eventually turned golden, and a whiff of disaster held real danger. Thus, he added another weapon—chancy as it was—to his arsenal of survival.

  But such a compulsion as this? Never before had he experienced the like: To be herded like a cow, five days down from the mountains, neglecting both work and food—neglecting even the all-important practice!—to be dumped at the foot of Maidenstairs like a sack of wheat, without the first notion of why he should be there? His life disrupted and his stomach growling, all for the Goddess’ mere whim?

  He was inclined to be annoyed.

  However, it was not politic to be annoyed at the foot of Maidenstairs within the heart of one of the Three Cities, and he was a man possessed of shrewdness.

  Deliberately, playing for those who might be watching from tower-top or window-slit, he made obeisance, cloak swirling gracefully as he sank to one knee in the Houndlight. He held the genuflection for a long beat of three, head bowed in reverence, then came straight in one fluid movement. Carefully, he backed nine steps from the foot of Maidenstairs, his eyes on the pinnacle of the Eastern Tower.

  Then, ritual flawlessly performed, he turned gently on his heel and walked back into the city.

  There was a guildhall in Dyan City, but he was not wishful of meeting his fellows thus new from the kiss of the Goddess. The few coins hoarded in the lining of his cloak were enough, he reckoned, for a meal at one of the outer inns. He trusted to his skills—rusty as they must be from so long without practice—to earn him a place near the hearth for sleeping, and a bit of sausage wrapped in fresh bread to see him along the road, tomorrow sunrise.

  Mind made up and course once more his own to chose, he sauntered through the streets of Dyan City, taking leisure to look about him, now that the lash was off his back. He marked the silks, furs and fine woolens; the gilded doors and the locked gardens, gates lit by the steady glow of electric lanterns, gift of Dyan Temple’s generator.

  He sighed and went away from the avenues of nobles, crossed the empty evening market and passed into a gaggle of thinner streets, most lit with candle-lanterns. More folk were about here, there being no pleasure-gardens to lock themselves into, and he went freely among them.

  Those who saw him at all merely marked a thin man, a bit taller than some, with a face that might have seen twenty years or forty, in the way of faces sun-browned and scoured by the winds of turning seasons. His neatly braided hair was black, showing no lighter strands; under the road dust his cloak was likewise black. He carried a bag beneath it, slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. But none passing him on the street would note that.

  The inn he chose, by and by, had a remarkably lifelike carving of a snowy owl aside the door, talons gripping the wooden peg it stood upon. On the wall above someone had shakily hand-painted the legend: Hunter’s Moon.

  He had not expected such erudition in this ring of the city and turned eagerly toward the merry red door and the wooden owl’s baleful stare. He moved his hand as he did so, conjuring a bright green counter from the air. He walked it across the back of his hand, vanished it, reached out and drew it from the carven feathers on the owl’s snowy cheek, grinning in unselfconscious pleasure. His fingers were not so stiff, after all.

  It was then he saw the parchment.

  Real parchment, such as Temple Proclamations were written upon, inked in green and signed in silver, with official ribbons dangling from the pentagram that sealed it. Heart unaccountably stilled—for what did Temple Proclamations have to do with him?—he leaned forward to read it.

  Let it hereby be known that all and any practitioners of the so-called “Craft Magic”, which is that fraud and sleight-of-hand designed only to trick the naive eye and beguile the foolish from the True Wonder of the Goddess, shall fail to display these supposed arts within the sight and hearing of the Circle.

  Let it also be known that any who in defiance of this order of the Temple persevere in displaying the “Craft Magic” shall be considered to have performed blasphemy and shall be schooled accordingly.

  This by the order of the Inner Circle, Dyan Temple, whose will is set forth by the hand of Greenlady upon the thirty-second night of the waxing moon looking toward Beltane.

  “Blasphemy.” His fingers flicked, vanishing the damning counters even as he tried to breathe normally, to hide all outward signs of fear. The “schooling” that drew one away from blasphemy had to do with incarceration in some deep room within the Temple, and the constant company of those of the Circle, whose purpose it was to bring the sinner to honest abhorrence of his sin and repudiation thereof.

  Some even survived the experience.

  Was
this why he had been driven to Dyan City? he wondered, and then shook his head. The Goddess knew each of Her children by name and every soul was as a crystal for Her scrying, so the teaching went. Armed with such knowledge, She could not for a moment have supposed that Her son Lute would gladly walk up Maidenstairs, declare himself magician and practitioner of the so-called “Craft Magic” and joyously embrace schooling.

  “We are all as the Goddess made us,” he whispered, and smiled thinly. It was a thing his master had been prone to say; the comfortable mantra of a man comfortable in his faith. Goddess thanked, he had not lived to see this.

  He looked again at the proclamation, at the unweathered parchment, the crisp ribbons, and the bright nail holding it to the wall over the owl’s left wing. Posted new this morn, or so he judged it.

  There was a guildhall in the city. A very full guildhall, no doubt, this being Beltane and practitioners of the “Craft Magic” standing at least as devout as the rest of the populace. On average.

  Behind him, he heard steps—voices bearing down toward the merry red door. In that instant, he made his decision, flicked a hand out, then melted into the shadows aside the doorway. The two customers—younger sons of outer-ring market families, by their dress and accent—passed within a finger’s breadth and never saw him.

  The door swung closed and Lute stepped into the street, moving with long, unhurried strides—back toward the deep of the city.

  Behind him, the carven owl stood vigil over sign, door and a bright, new nail.

  THE HIGH PRIESTESS

  Wisdom, serenity, judgment, learning, sagacity, common sense

  “Lady Moonhawk! Lady Moonhawk, come quickly!” The novice who demanded it hurtled pell-mell into the library, sandals grating on the polished wooden floor. She hit one of the red and yellow rugs with no diminishment of speed, skidded—and would have fallen except that the woman curled in the window glanced up from her book and prevented it with a flicker of long fingers and the breath of a Word.