by Sharon Lee
Veln's jaw was set. "But the new Captain—"
"Well, and there's a case like I was telling you, about your da not always thinking right. He's the one set the boy among Grounders, see it? Small wonder now he says folks is folks and undertakes to solve for Crew and Grounder. He's got ties, does your cousin Anjemalti. Think on it and see how it makes sense. Would you have him honorless, and turning his thoughts from his friends, because the Crew that threw him out suddenly crooks its finger and calls him home?"
The boy was looking a bit less sure. "But he takes—Grounders—instead of Crew—"
"Veln, Veln! And what's Corbinye but Crew to the core of her?" Finchet held up his hand. "Or are you thinking like some, that she slighted us? Tale I heard was she died for the Captain's sake—her duty, will you say? And for doing her duty she gains a reward—a new body, comely and strong, so that the Captain not lose her service. What's ill with either of them in that?"
Veln blinked. "What I heard—"
"Wisdom," Finchet interrupted tartly. "Listens to all, and thinks on itself." His eye snagged on a certain reading, there along the wall, and he stood. "Here's time for business now, boy. Attend me."
Together they went to the board, and sat down in the piloting chairs. Finchet touched a series of colored wooden buttons, and shutters peeled back from eight small screens situated at eye-level.
"You see these sharp, boy?"
Veln squirmed in his seat, craned, and sighed. "It would be better if I had a higher seat, I think, Uncle."
Finchet nodded. "There's the pillow off the bed," he said, checking readings and comparing them against the images held in the screens. "Or, if you like, there's the Book."
The boy stared. "Use the Book to sit on?"
"It's been used for ruder things," the old man returned, and threw the child a grin. "Hurry, whichever. I'm set to need your eyes right quick."
Veln ran quiet across the stone floor, nimbly avoiding the furniture, ducking under the strings of herbs and onions hanging from the rafters to dry. He returned somewhat slower, the Book clutched to his chest with both arms, placed it careful on the chair-seat and reverently lowered his rump.
"Better?" Finchet asked.
"Yes, Uncle."
"Well enough." Finchet made an adjustment to the resolution and then glanced over to the boy.
"We're set for a step-orbit. Best we can do—and that on an emergency system I doubt me was ever meant to work. Wouldn't have tried it, truth told, except the Captain got that Arachnid to come in and put things in top shape. Anywise—we're going down to the planet, step by step. Take us a little more than two Ship's days. Reason we're doing it this way, aside from it's never smart to just set down on a strange world without some situation study, is the Captain is desirous of maps. You scan it?"
Veln frowned. "The automatics can map while we're on the way down, Uncle. There's no need for us to watch—"
"Ah, but there is. This world is prisoner of The Combine. The Captain needs understanding eyes on these screens—eyes that know the shape of a fortress, or an anti-ship gun, or a transponder site. Hear what I tell you, young Veln?"
The boy's eyes were very bright. "Is—we're going to invade? Make the planet ours?" He drew a deep shaking breath and leaned across to grip Finchet's hand. "Is this the, the Promised Land, Uncle? Is this what GriffithPod sent the First Captain and Crew to find?"
The Gardener shook his head. "Starwind, child, what do I know about GriffithPod's intent or the First Captain's commission? If you've been allowed the Logs, then you know more than ever I do." He chuckled and withdrew his hand. "What I know is present orders, present course and present possibles. Are you able to scan five through eight?"
Veln was sitting very tall, shoulders square, eyes shining. "Aye."
"Do it, then. If there's aught out of common—even if you don't have its name—press yon blue button to note it. If you've got something you know will be bad for us, let me know about it, too. I'll be spending part of our last orbit calculating landing coords. Won't do to set us atop a barracks of Combine Marines!"
Veln laughed at that and turned his face attentive to the screen, right hand poised over the blue stud. After a minute of watching him, Finchet bent to the weary task of monitoring his own screens.
Chapter Sixty-One
The gun swept down and Corbinye moaned, certain that the next instant would see it fire. Certain, certain, that he was dead, and not a thing she might do except run forward and die in his wake, and still Anjemalti walked onward, oblivious alike to the gun, his death, her anguish.
The gun swung closer and compressed a little, firing tube sliding into locator as those who had its keeping fine-tuned the setting. It shuddered once, all along the barrel, then froze as Anjemalti strode into range—
—And out again, swinging under the lowering muzzle as Finchet might stoop beneath a branch slung too low across a Garden path.
"Hah!" The cry broke from her lips as her heart lurched back into life, beating with a joy as excruciating as it was short-lived.
True enough, the gun had stopped and Anjemalti now walked well inside the ship's safety ring.
But as she watched this and that of the ship's minor hatches and go-ways began to cycle; armored doors began to slide away, ramps to descend.
From the first such stepped a figure prudently clothed in a light, non-vacuum suit. And as this figure stepped from the end of the ramp, it raised a high-powered rifle to the ready.
Corbinye found herself racing forward, palm gun snug in her hand, running after Anjemalti without thought, nearly as heedless to danger as he, rejoicing that here at last was a service she could render—a danger she might, with skill and with luck, shield him from.
* * *
The pathway was as a long shining ribbon, stretched out before his feet. He need only follow it from where he had been to the place where it was necessary that he be. Follow the ribbon and strike truly at the vessel of the enemy. Do these things and his enemies would be delivered unto him—this he knew.
The voice had told him so.
Questioned, Gem could not have said when first he had apprehended the shining trail, nor when he had first heard the voice. It might have been that they manifested simultaneously, at the moment when he had given over his dread of the gun and, subsequently, of his own death, and allowed the blazing need to stop them override every sense.
They will not kill the Bindalche, he promised himself, stooping under the gun's barrel without breaking stride.
NOR SHALL THEY, MY BOLD, the voice assured him, caressingly.
They will have no hesernym, he continued, half-chanting as he followed the glimmering trail. They will cease to hound me. They will be powerless!
YES, the voice soothed. EXACTLY SO, BELOVED. YOU MAY STRIKE THEM POWERLESS. YOU ARE SO STRONG, SO CLEAN OF THOUGHT. DRINK THEM FOR ME, MY BRIGHT, MY ONLY, MY WARRIOR! DRINK THEM DRY AND SLAKE ME. I HAVE THIRSTED SO LONG!
The pathway was widening and before him he saw the ship of the Vornet; saw it as a spider's web of energy, crossing, recrossing, pulsing with life. There was a dark cloud hovering over it, seeming, indeed to cross the trail, diminishing its brightness. Gem hesitated, but the voice only laughed.
EVENT FORMS TOO LATE, it cried. FORWARD, BELOVED! WHAT IS IN A CLOUD TO STOP YOU?
Yet still he tarried, and it seemed that the path grew less bright, the ship of his enemy less vibrant with power. He heard, where he had heard nothing but the voice for some while, the unmistakable sound of gunfire, and he half-turned from the path—
THEY WILL BEST YOU! taunted the voice.
They will not! he snarled, remembering Shilban's body slumping in the arms of his tormentor; seeing again Corbinye's eyes widen with shock on beholding the face that never was hers. . ..
He heard another sound—a human voice, crying out in anguish and in love—"Anjemalti!"—and he tarried a heartbeat longer.
There was a coarse cough near at hand and Gem screamed, going to his
knees upon the pathway as his shoulder took fire from pain. The Trident fell from nerveless fingers—and he caught it in his other hand, flinging to his feet in the next instant and running along the blurry, disintegrating pathway.
He hurtled into the cloud and screamed again at a cold that was agony. But he did not halt his pace. Somewhere—somewhen—a voice was murmuring, caressingly, passionately, calling him all sorts of beloved, urging him on to the ship, promising him worship, an eternity of sensuous delight—none of it mattered; indeed, he barely heard it.
He broke from the cloud and charged on, the ship looming in his sight, energy lines pulsing. He all but flew the last feet to the hull he did not see, Trident raised for the strike.
And as he brought it down, into the very center of a power-knot, the thought that lifted above all others, even above the gloating of the voice, was: Corbinye!
* * *
They'd not done much that was good by the boy, and quite a bit that was ill. Ria knelt by him in the GenShip's gloomy Common Room, her finger tracking the rickety wrist-pulse and her mind busy.
She was hardly bruised, having only endured a bit of routine slapping about by the captain's bullboy, in order to verify what Milt had told them. The accuracy of that information was what had frightened her, not the blows, for she knew Milt's head to be stuffed with ballad-hero nonsense. He would have never spat that data free.
And so they had beaten it out of him, as he must have known they would.
"Boy," Ria murmured in the dark, "you're almost too stupid to live." She sighed and ran knowing fingers over him, wincing at the damage. "Almost too stupid to live," she said again, sitting back on her heels.
The GenShip crew had taken their lights and their comm-links—only sensible. She considered and discarded the idea of using the GenShip's comm: She could count on Dez to get antsy after a bit and send someone over to fetch them. The most urgent task at the moment was making sure Milt was alive when that happened.
Ria frowned in the direction of a ceiling dim—couldn't very well call it a "light," after all—and mentally retraced their progress through the ship. They had—she was almost certain they had—passed a sick bay of some sort.
She came to her feet, ignoring the protest of her bruises, peeled off her jacket and tucked it around the boy, who moaned a little, and twitched, and then was quiet.
If she went careful, there was enough light to navigate by. Sick bay would likely have a stretcher and a blanket. And she might luck into bandages, pain killers . . .
"I'll be back soon, boy," she told her unconscious partner, and left him, walking slow and cautious in the warm, noisy dark.
* * *
"There!" Veln hit the blue button and snatched at Finchet's sleeve. "See it, Uncle? Screen eight and sliding . . ."
Finchet made adjustments, captured image and data from Veln's side of the board and fed them through the cruncher.
"What is it?" the boy demanded excitedly. "An ocean?"
"Not likely that," the man returned, sorting the data deftly and with a growing sense of dismay. "Oceans aren't ringed in by walls, young Veln. They come and go as they will. . .." He leaned back in the chair as his mind grappled with the enormity of what he had just seen, what the cruncher assured him was true.
"Then what is it?" Veln said impatiently, and Finchet sighed.
"It looks to be a dam, boy. A big dam."
Chapter Sixty-Two
Her first shot struck the rifle-wielder high in the arm, deflecting his aim. He spun, rifle rising again, and squeezed off a shot that tore into the earth just aside of Corbinye and she returned another shot, cursing the poor palm gun, with its modest firepower. A marksman could score on such distant targets, but the chance of a mortal wound was negligible.
The man with the rifle staggered, slipped, or so it seemed, and tumbled off the ramp. Corbinye gave attention to two other potential assassins, encouraging them to keep their heads prudently down.
Anjemalti was directly ahead of her, still walking in that leisurely, almost dreamy way that allowed of neither danger nor death. Corbinye broke her stride for an instant and scored a shallow wound across a gunwoman's skull, a bright red ribbon showing sudden against black hair. Satisfied with her work, fearing that the palm gun's charge was nearing a state of depletion, she stretched herself into a flat run, meaning to catch up with Anjemalti, to use her own body as a shield. . ..
She saw him hesitate in his steady walking. Saw him stop and half-turn, as if he had just become aware of the mayhem around him, of the gunfire and the shouts and the straining hum of the ship's systems—
She did not see the gunman lying in the shadow of the ship take careful aim with his rifle, though she saw others, who were just as deadly a danger to him.
"Anjemalti!" she screamed, meaning to warn him, and saw him start; saw the flash of the hidden killer's gun and heard Anjemalti cry out at the same instant—saw him go to his knees, Trident falling from shocked-open fingers.
She slammed to a halt and stood tall there amid the storm of projectiles. Stood tall and took careful aim, pulling on every ounce of her skill. Stood, untouched, for a wonder, and pulled the trigger, hating the man who had wounded him—
She missed; heard her bullet whine off the hull of the ship.
Anjemalti was on his feet, not so blackly wounded as she had feared, though the blood flowed freely down his arm, dripping off slack fingers. He turned toward the ship and with a speed she did not think he had in him leapt forward. The gunman in the shadows shifted to take better aim and Corbinye screamed, charging forward, gun up—fired, and fired again and again—four times, before the little gun coughed empty in her hand and by that time the rifleman lay still and Anjemalti had lifted the Trident and slammed it, prongs first, into the skin of the ship.
She expected an explosion, or a flash of light; a choir of angels—something that would begin to balance the death of the Bindalche chief, Anjemalti's wound, her own terrors—
There was instead—silence.
Absolute, utter silence as every light on the ship went out and the gun drooped in its turret and the engines simply—stopped.
Before her, Anjemalti's fingers gave up their hold and he slumped, sliding bonelessly down the hull. In the silence, she began to walk toward him, and heard one last sound: The cough of a long-range rifle.
The pain that followed the sound seared and she cried out. Then her knees buckled and she fell, unconscious before she hit rock.
* * *
There was indeed a stretcher in sick bay, and a blanket. And much, much more.
Ria settled the boy into a very modern doctoring unit, punched appropriate buttons and got a gratifying reading. She okayed the outlined course of treatment, the machine buzzed to life and she stretched out on the abandoned gurney to stare at the relatively bright ceiling and think.
The line of the GenShip captain's questioning said plain that she meant a strike at the Big Ship. Ria didn't think she could take the Big Ship, even with the codes and line approaches. Getting docked was one thing, after all. Taking control of the tower was something quite else.
Still, Ria conceded fair-mindedly, a Combine Star Class mothership specially outfitted for frontier duty was a prize a GenShip captain might work to win. You couldn't blame her for trying. Though she'd probably earn death for trying—her and as many of her crew as were caught. The Combine was not forgiving of piracy and the GenCaptain surely knew that.
Ria frowned at the ceiling. The more she thought about it, the odder it seemed that the GenCaptain would abandon a working, if elderly, ship in a gamble for an admittedly sparkling ship of The Combine. Even if her act of piracy succeeded, she would have made The Combine her active enemy, which was foolhardy in the extreme. The Combine would think nothing of dispatching hunter ships to track down and destroy the pirated Star cruiser.
And if she lost her gamble, which seemed the most likely outcome, she would have annoyed The Combine and given up her ship—all for nothing
.
Ria sighed and blinked at the fading ceiling. "GenShip crews," she muttered thickly. "They're all crazy."
With that comforting thought in mind, she fell asleep.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Star Class Two, Number Six-Three-One-One-Niner; the Combine Felucci, known to both her crew and the outriders reporting to it as the "Big Ship," rode placid among the starfields surrounding Spangiln System.
Third shift had been dealing with the various alarms and excursions emanating from the InRing and the mood on the bridge was one of high good humor only slightly leavened by puzzlement. A treat like a GenCrew abandoning ship within Combine space didn't happen every tour, after all, and the joke was made more precious by the startlement of the InRing pilot who had been setting his salvage beacons when the garden pod jettisoned. The shift historian liked that bit best and played the tape several times, chuckling and shaking her head.
The garden's destination bothered the security guy, and made him less than patient with the historian's antics. He snarled at her and the shift chief called them both to order and the historian shrugged her shoulders and went back to trying to trace the GenShip's numbers. Security muttered and bit his lip; cleared his screen and tried again to plot a trajectory for the garden pod while he worried about whether or not it was manned. The historian would probably know the answer to that, but he was reluctant to ask her—yet.
The mood on the bridge steadied as people settled back into their routines. InRing communications dropped back from the novel to the comfortably boring; OutRing reported no sightings of GenShip escape pods or of anything else out of the ordinary. The shift hit the half-way point and began to slide down toward quitting time. Security finished running his possibles and stretched where he sat. The shift chief got up and ambled over to the refreshment bank to draw his mid-shift jolt of caffeine. The historian cussed mildly and leaned back in her chair, running distracted fingers through her already untidy curls. She cleared her throat, preparatory to addressing the bridge at large, but the quartercon man beat her to it.