[Mageworlds 5] - The Long Hunt

by Debra Doyle

  He pointed at Esmet. "Stand by, run to jump."

  Esmet was in training for his own pilot's papers, and the Ophelan system was a good place to get in the necessary practice. Ships had been coming and going out of Ophel for a long time, and the navicomps had lots of accumulated data to work with.

  Amaro settled back in the command seat to watch the stars outside the Dusty's viewscreens, all the while keeping a surreptitious eye on the comp data readout and the jump-point indicator. They lined up nicely as Esmet handled the controls. The stars shifted color, then blazed and vanished, replaced by the grey nonsubstance of hyperspace.

  "Good run," Amaro said to Esmet. "One more just as good and I'll sign you off on that. Assuming, of course, that we arrive somewhere within shouting range of Sapne."

  Mistress Klea Santreny stood at Loading Gate 2B in the Sombrelír Port Complex, waiting for a shuttle to take her and Mael Taleion to the low-orbit transfer station where the Magelord had left his ship. A small Eraasian-built craft, not designed for atmosphere work, Mael's Arrow-through-the-Doorway had range and speed that the cargo tubs and ground-grabbers of similar size didn't match… or so its owner claimed. It had been assembled in orbit, and would stay that way forever.

  Klea had spent the rest of the previous night working the diplomatic problems presented by their departure. Taking a privately owned vessel out of Ophelan space and into the Khesatan sphere of influence—especially when the vessel was fast, was armed, and had a point of origin in the Mageworlds— required a number of passes and permissions. She had been given to understand, early on, that gratuities of sufficient size, distributed in the proper quarters, would make everything simple. Out of principle, she had declined to make any such payments. The officials concerned would do their work, and do it promptly, because that was what the law required.

  It had taken a great deal of hard work and persistence on Klea's part, but in the end the officials had capitulated. Arrow-through-the-Doorway would be leaving Ophelan space before day's end Sombrelír time, as Mael Taleion had asked.

  And I still don't know why the hell I agreed to help him do this, Klea thought. Except that he's chasing shadows, and so am I.

  "Are there any Mages on Khesat?" she asked aloud. "Other than the ones on the Peace and Trade Commission, I mean."

  "None on the Commission," Mael said. "At least, not if you're talking about Circle members. We would not be able to perform our devotions properly under such circumstances." He gave her a speculative glance. "Why? Do you Adepts have your own members on the Commission?"

  "I'm not sure," Klea said vaguely. Inwardly she gave Mael points for his deflection of the unwelcome line of inquiry. The smoothness of his maneuver, however, argued that there might well be Mages active somewhere on Khesat.

  Active in what? she thought. That is a good question. And I wish I knew the answer.

  The passenger cabin on Dust Devil was a long way from the suite Faral and Jens had occupied with Chaka aboard Bright-Wind-Rising. The bunks were stacked three high along one bare metal wall—bulkhead, Faral reminded himself, they call them bulkheads—and a battery of storage lockers filled most of the available space on the side opposite. An airtight door led to the passageway outside, and at the other end of the narrow cabin a second door led to the refresher cubicle.

  The bunks were fitted out with the pads and webbing to double as acceleration couches, and a red Strap Down light glowed over the main door on the inside. Once Dust Devil

  had made her straight-line run to the jump point and entered hyperspace, the red light went off.

  Faral unbuckled his safety webbing and climbed down from the middle bunk of the tier. "If I ever have to get smuggled off-planet in a cargo crate again," he said, stretching out muscles still knotted and kinked from the experience, "I'm going to insist on getting the custom-fitted model."

  "I'll make sure to put that in your file." Miza, on the bottom level, was short enough to sit on the edge of the pad without bumping her head on the rack above. "If Huool hasn't thrown me out of the program already for making a botch."

  Jens didn't bother getting down from the top bunk at all; he unstrapped and propped himself up on one elbow to look at her. "We cruelly took you captive and forced you to accompany us against your will," he said. "Gentlesir Huool would never fault you for that."

  "I'm supposed to be clever enough not to get caught," she said. Faral thought he heard a catch in her voice, and decided that he didn't blame her; it had been a long and trying day, and the hour or so of sleep at the Nanáli Starlight Family Hotel hadn't lasted nearly long enough.

  "Don't worry," he told her. "You said you were training to be an analyst, not some kind of field person. Nobody expects their in-house people to be any good at this sort of thing."

  She snorted. "Nobody expects a pair of tourists to be any good at that sort of thing either. Who taught you?"

  "The wrinkleskins back on Maraghai," Faral said. "And my father. I don't know who taught my cousin how to snag blasters off of corpses, though."

  Jens sketched a nod and a one-handed flourish. "One of the many skills I learned at my mother's knee and other low joints."

  The chime of the door signal interrupted him. Faral went over to palm the lockplate and admit the newcomer—but the door was already sliding open.

  So the cabin doors are keyed to external controls, he thought as the airtight seal broke and the metal leaves parted. I wonder which side has the override.

  When the door had slid all the way open, Captain Amaro stepped into the cabin. He looked brisk and businesslike, as if he smuggled off-worlders every time he left port.

  "I see that you made the translation to hyperspace without any trouble," he said. "Now that we're in, the three of you can take your meals with me if you like. I'm afraid, though, that you won't be able to meet the rest of the crew. Safer for them that way, and safer for you."

  "You've carried nondocumented passengers before?" Jens asked.

  Amaro glanced up at the top bunk. "You really expect an answer to such a question?"

  Jens shrugged. "I was going to ask about the mechanics of changing names, and I thought you might know."

  "A minor thing," Amaro said. He sounded flattered. "You have a name picked out that you like?"

  "I have an alias that I want to get rid of," said Jens, "and a pressing need to arrive on Khesat under my own name."

  "Sapne," Amaro said at once. "Everything you need is there. Mind you, a Sapnean ID is a hasty remedy, and not something to stand up under any kind of deep scan."

  "All I need is the right name," Jens told him. "Sapne sounds like it will serve admirably."

  "Then we're all set. The dinner gong goes off at fifteen-thirty ship's-time; I'll see you gentles then."

  Amaro left. The airtight door slid closed behind him. After a few seconds, Faral went over to the door and thumbed the Open switch. The door didn't budge.

  "So that's how it is," said Faral. He tried the switch a second time to make sure, then turned to look at Jens and Miza. "We'd better work hard on staying friendly… because otherwise we aren't going to enjoy this hyperspace transit at all."

  In his private office at the Retreat, the Master of the Adepts' Guild regarded the day's schedule with resignation. In the morning, he had conferences with the senior masters about food and laundry for the new apprentices and about ongoing repairs to the Retreat's physical structures. In the afternoon, he had a meeting with the Guild's treasurer, Master Adan, to discuss whether the Guild's privately held funds should remain on Galcen or be transferred to one of the financial institutions on Suivi Point. And at a late-evening hour that was the only time even remotely convenient for half a dozen people on as many different planets, he had a hyperspace comm conference with the heads of the Guild branches in Khesatan and adjacent space.

  Work and more work. And boring work at that.

  Once, some years before, Owen Rosselin-Metadi had declared himself ready to defeat the invading Magelords and
restore the Guild to its accustomed place in galactic affairs. He'd expected the task to be difficult and dangerous, but that prospect had never swayed him. He'd spent years as the previous Guild Master's personal apprentice and trusted right hand, and the work he'd done in those days had been by no means light and easy.

  The civilized galaxy, he thought, is damned lucky that nobody ever bothered to tell me the job of saving it came with two decades of ongoing administrative follow-up.

  The incoming-message light on his desktop blinked at him. Owen touched the sensor dot that activated the status display: coded compressed-text, keyed to his ID, point of origin Ophel. He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. His own former apprentice and trusted right hand, that would be, with a report on the troublesome situation involving his two scapegrace nephews.

  Another touch on the desktop, this time to feed in his ID scan and lock it into the message. The text poured into the display space.

  Mistress Klea Santreny to Owen Rosselin-Metadi, Master of the Adepts' Guild, sends greeting.

  Both of your nephews, I'm certain, are dutiful and well-brought-up young men. This leaves us with the question of exactly who taught them to shed pursuit like a pair of professionals. They are no longer on Ophel. Nor does anybody on Ophel seem to know where they have gone, though the members of at least one sublegal organization are apparently searching for them with great diligence.

  If it's any consolation to you, your sister-in-law on Maraghai also seems to be worried about possible developments. She has sent out her Second to look for Jens and Faral—and he, in his turn, believes that their voluntary disappearance is tied in somehow with events scheduled to occur on Khesat. He speaks also of a revenant, a "homeless one" in his language, coming out of the Mageworlds on a quest for some kind of vengeance; he references in particular the message forwarded by courtesy from the Circles on Cracanth.

  I confess that I do not entirely follow, nor entirely trust, his line of reasoning. However, I'm forced to admit that if he is correct about the Cracanthan matter, we could all be in serious trouble. You most particularly—since the name he gives to the revenant is Errec Ransome.

  We are preparing now to take ship for Khesat, on what may possibly be a fool's errand—but having found nothing but dead ends on Ophel, I am reduced to following a Magelord's intuitions.

  If you could send me your best information on what is happening on Khesat these days, I would rest easier during the transit.

  Her identification code followed the message, along with her name. Owen smiled a little as he closed the message, in spite of the gravity of its contents. Mistress Santreny had been one of the better things to happen to the Guild, back in the bad times during the Second Magewar.

  Then the smile faded. If the Guild's former Master had reason to pursue his onetime apprentice even after death, then Klea herself, though she didn't say so, was equally a target.

  She was there, out in the Void. All of us were, when we had to—

  —when we killed him. This is what comes of doing a thing, and then not thinking of it for twenty years. The consequences of it rise up while our faces are turned away, and the dead come back to haunt us.

  Owen was tempted to summon Mistress Santreny back to the Retreat and let Llannat Hyfid's tame Magelord keep up the chase alone. But Klea had asked him for information, not for protection—she appeared to have her work well in hand, in spite of her protestations of bafflement, and would not appreciate being called away from the pursuit.

  The Green Sun's operations center in Sombrelír was brightly lit, although at this hour only one comptech was on duty. An open box of take-out sausage buns beside her elbow said that she wasn't leaving her console, but the smell of hnann in the air suggested that maybe she hadn't been concentrating solely on her job before the field ops arrived.

  Kolpag and Ruhn weren't interested in either fact. They had transcripts and files called up all over the central work-table, and their cups of uffa had dwindled to red-ocher dregs as they looked through the files and ran the databases.

  "Well, well, well," said Kolpag suddenly. "Look what we've got here. Comm conference, twenty-one thirty-one decimal five hours. Someone inbound to Huool's. Duration of contact under two minutes."

  "Got a transcript?" asked Ruhn.

  Kolpag indicated a screen's worth of gibberish on the worktable. "Scrambled. But let's look at this another way. Our boys must have had help. Huool is expensive. So who's paying the bills?"

  "Got that one. Huool."

  Kolpag felt like smacking his new partner. "No, no, not that letter-of-credit thing. Who paid Huool enough for him to provide it?"

  Ruhn shrugged. "I can't think of anything smaller than planetary royalty who could come up with that kind of cash in a hurry."

  "Let's not jump to conclusions." Kolpag turned to the comptech, who was finishing off the last of the sausage buns. "Time to earn your pay. A little traffic analysis. Calls from Nanáli to Sombrelír, no more specific origin, within one half-hour prior to twenty-one thirty. Cross-ref to call from same location to anywhere within Sombrelír, same time period. Go."

  "Working." The comptech wiped her fingers, switched off the deedle music from a local rover-channel, and swiveled her chair back to her console. Her hands danced over the comp keys to another, more insistent rhythm.

  Kolpag looked up at the map of Ophel's western political zone on the ops room wall and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. He was coming up now on a solid day with no sleep, and he could feel the case hedging him in, making him crazy. The loss of Freppys—he turned back to the file in front of him. After a moment, the data on the screen began to make sense again.

  "I see something odd here," he said. "Freetrader Dust Devil, Amaro commanding. In port for a scheduled one-week layover, cargo beginning to arrive tomorrow morning, loading to continue through Sabinnight."

  Ruhn looked bored. "So?"

  "So she lifted at zero-two this morning."

  "The hell." Ruhn turned to the comptech. "Any luck?"

  "Still running."

  "Halt run. Narrow the parameters: in and out within ten-minute walk of…" Ruhn leaned over and looked at the line Kolpag was pointing to. "… Docking Easement G-Nine Old Town."

  "Meanwhile," Kolpag said, calling up yet more files onto the worktable, "let's see just who's associated with Dust Devil."

  The answers came in quick succession.

  "We have matches on twenty-seven comm calls, match criteria," the comptech said. A strip of printout flimsy scrolled out of the slot beside her. Ruhn snatched it free as soon as it cut, and ran his finger down the rows.

  "Time, time," he muttered. Then— "Here." He starred two lines with his stylus and shoved the flimsy toward Kolpag. "What do you think?"

  Kolpag looked at the starred items. "Call from Nanáli, Central Rail Depot, to Sombrelír. Eight minutes later, call from Sombrelír number to Sector seven, duration and time match the incoming call to Huool. I think we're in business."

  "Closest point to the Sombrelír location is Easement G-Nine." Ruhn looked impressed. "How did you do that?"

  "I'm good. Now let's track down the rest. Get me ops, and find a track on where Dust Devil went."

  "Hang on," said Ruhn. "Background on Amaro coming in. Sworn man to Bindweed, the Old Town restaurateur. She and her partner are co-owners of his ship. And you remember what the intel files said about those two."

  "Backtrack complete," the comptech said. She shook her head. "My, oh, my."

  "What do you have?" Kolpag demanded.

  "My, oh, my… those two boys you were tracking. I found out who paid for their tickets to get here."

  "Going to tell us?"

  "Yeah," she said. "Highest of Khesat."

  "Planetary royalty," said Ruhn. "What did I tell you."

  "Damn. Did the boss happen to mention who our original clients were supposed to be, back before everything went sour?"

  "No, and I didn't ask, and neither would you. The b
oss is the. client right now."

  "Right you are." Kolpag pushed his green-painted metal stool a little back from the worktable. "I'm feeling good about this one. I think we've got the bastards. Bet me that the Dusty didn't make an arc for Khesat."

  "That's where you're wrong," Ruhn said. "Got that track already. They're on the way to Sapne."

  "Sapne's nothing but a customs dodge. Once they get what they came for, they'll be gone." Kolpag stood and addressed the comptech again. "I want tickets to Khesat for me and my partner. Next available ship."

  The comptech punched the request in. "Got it. Standard drop."

  "Thanks," Kolpag said. "Now I'm going to go to my room and get some sleep. See you in a few."

  The midmorning sun was streaming in brightly through the windows as he left the ops center. But for the first time in hours, Kolpag Garbazon felt that he had the case in hand.

  Chapter X.

  Hyperspace; Sapne

  « ^ »

  Navigator and pilot-apprentice Trav Esmet had made over a dozen runs with Captain Amaro on the Dust Devil, three of them by way of an unlisted port call on Sapne. This was the first time he had set up the course and made the jump for Sapne himself, but he had confidence in his work. Amaro was a cautious man when it came to matters of piloting and navigation. He wouldn't have turned over the jump to his apprentice in the first place if he hadn't thought that Trav was ready.

  The transit itself proved an uneventful one. Most of them were, Trav had learned by now, unless the ship or the crew had brought some kind of trouble into hyper along with them. In general, however, hyperspace was a good place to be if you were a spacer—you had plenty of time to work on internal repairs to the ship, or to catch up on your sleep, or to wait out whatever enemies you'd left behind.

  The run-to-jump, now, was always dangerous. A pilot had to balance the ship's power between realspace engines running at extreme speed for a jump-point—falter even once, or deviate from your straight-line course, and you lost the point and had to make your run-up all over again—and hyperspace engines that had to be wanned up and ready to cut in at the moment of translation. If something mechanical was going to fail, it would fail then, and the result would be ugly.