Revolution's Shore

by Kate Elliott

  “And anyway,” continued Jenny in a lower, more confidential voice, “I’m sure you have better plans for helping the revolution on Landfall than Blue ever did. Now you’re free of him.”

  Red’s sobs snuffled to a stop as she considered this aspect of developments. “An’ there’s a couple of younger kids he never could stand that I like well enough, and they’d listen to me—”

  “Exactly.” Jenny gave her a comradely slap on the back. “Now get.”

  Red ran off with a hasty good-bye.

  “I’m beginning to feel sorry for Security on this planet,” said Lily as Jenny walked back up the ramp.

  Inside, Blue had decided that the test was positive. Lily glanced at Yehoshua.

  “It’s your ship,” he said to her.

  “Then we strap in. Call in our guards, Jenny. How soon can we lift, Blumoris?”

  Pinto keyed in Blue’s stats and began to fix a course. Within minutes, they were secured and ready to lift.

  The old roadway that girdled the warehouse district, although pocked and ragged with age, proved sufficient for a runway. Once the shuttle cleared the ground, Pinto headed away from the city, keeping low, running the contours of the slopes and ridges for almost an hour until they reached the shoreline. Then he banked steeply up and cut for orbit. The pressures in the cabin grew heavier, plateaued, and at last diminished slightly as Pinto leveled the shuttle into a smooth curve. Radio traffic gave no sign yet that their flight had been noticed.

  Lily rose and checked all their passengers, including the silent, sheeted corpse of Alsayid. She paused longest by Kyosti. He had been given the single stasis chair, to ease the pressure of the lift on his wounds. He was unconscious, but he breathed with the same slow evenness of a sleeping man.

  Next to him, Yehoshua’s injured crewwoman moaned in a low, semiconscious voice, only half-aware of their flight. Yehoshua sat in the front, lips turned down, his face expressionless in grief, as he watched the changing view out the plastine without any interest Lily could discern. In the very back, Blue was busy calculating on a screen, calling up schematics of the shuttle’s amplified engines, and tampering with them.

  Everyone else, except Aliasing and Bach at comm and, of course, Pinto, had fallen asleep. Jenny cradled Gregori’s bright head on her lap.

  Lily returned to her chair and sat down. Yehoshua glanced at her, nodded, and she sank back gratefully and went to sleep.

  When she woke, they were drifting in the dark, empty field of space. The brilliant spray of stars surrounded them. She blinked and sat up. The stocky figure at the pilot’s seat did not seem familiar, and she realized that Pinto sat sleeping in the chair beside her, body straining against the straps.

  She felt the familiar, quick curl of nausea in her stomach at weightlessness and then controlled it. “Yehoshua?” she asked, recognizing the person at the pilot’s board finally.

  He turned his head, all his acknowledgment.

  “How long? How far out are we?”

  He checked the red numbers soundlessly clicking off on the clock. “Nine fleet hours out. In this boat, another thirty-one to the rendezvous point. We’re on auto until the next asteroid belt—then Pinto will come back on.”

  “And Landfall?”

  “Nothing. Either they didn’t see us, or they didn’t care, or they’re following now hoping we’ll lead them somewhere.” He sounded equally apathetic about all three options. “Although I doubt any ships would negotiate two asteroid belts to chase a limping shuttle. Our charts aren’t even complete for the edge of this system.”

  “Have you slept?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Shouldn’t you?”

  “No.” He did not raise his voice, but something in his tone made her decide not to pursue the question. He went back to staring out at space.

  Lily retrieved her screen from her belt and started a log of the Landfall expedition. Eventually she finished it. Others had awakened. Rainbow unstrapped and handed out rations. The shuttle reached, and Pinto negotiated, the second asteroid belt. It was the only interesting part of the trip.

  Lily dozed, studied engine schematics with Blue, watching closely as Finch examined a still-unconscious Kyosti, and spoke reassuring words to the crewwoman with the broken leg.

  At last they reached the rendezvous point. Finch went on comm. Pinto yawned at the pilot’s board. Instrument sweeps showed nothing. Comm picked up no traffic.

  They altered their position. Nothing.

  Altered it again. By this time everyone was awake on board, except of course Kyosti. Even the injured woman had refused her painkiller in order to listen: their alternative now was to limp on quarter power six days back to Landfall and turn themselves in.

  In the overpowering, expectant silence, the faint hiss of static sounded more like a person whistling through teeth. One small, frozen planet unveiled its stark and lonely curve at the very edge of the transparent shield.

  “Wait,” whispered Finch. The quiet word electrified the cabin. “I’ve got movement on another band, barely there. But it’s not any band I’ve ever used before.” He tweaked knobs, buttons, careful and sure in his domain.

  A loud scratch of static startled them, faded, and then there it was, a whisper lost in the depths of space, barely caught by Finch’s expertise.

  “This is the Forlorn Hope. This is the … Forlorn Hope. Do you … copy? Do you—”

  Paisley shrieked. “It be ya ghost!” she cried, terrified. “It be ya old ghost ship. We got to run!” She fumbled at her straps.

  “Paisley!” Lily’s voice shocked the girl into silence.

  “Idiot tattoo!” hissed Finch, fiddling madly with his controls. “Now I’ve lost it.”

  Paisley, huddled in her seat, made a warding gesture with one hand that all the Ridanis but Pinto echoed.

  Silence on comm. Static crackled.

  “No, wait,” said Pinto softly. “I got a fix on the trail. I think it must have been caught by that planet.”

  “And I’m willing to bet that was a mechanical hail,” said Finch, glancing at Pinto with comradely agreement—until he recalled that Pinto was also an idiot tattoo, and jerked his gaze back to comm.

  Pinto’s lips curled up into a self-righteous sneer.

  “Well?” Lily demanded. “What are we waiting for? Set a course.”

  15 The Mule Balks

  THEY FOUND THE HULK of the vessel calling itself the Forlorn Hope locked in a high, stranded orbit around the frozen planet that rimmed the edge of Landfall system.

  “I get nothing but the same signal, looped,” said Finch. “I don’t think there’s anyone aboard.”

  “Bring us alongside, in contiguous orbit,” ordered Lily. “We’ll board. Do you think it’s really the Forlorn Hope?”

  The answer came, surprisingly, from Blue. He had keyed frantically onto his screen as they approached, and now, with a crow of triumph, he lifted up his arm to display a fine-detailed line drawing.

  “It does!” he cried. “It conforms to the exterior specs for the old highroad fleet. Central impounded the four that reached here, but this one got away. And there’s none left operational that I know of. Central never could build any boat as good. If this is really her—”

  “It be ya sore hard luck,” muttered Paisley with determination. “Sore, hard, terrible luck, to tamper with such as were cast adrift from ya pattern so long since. It be wrong o’ them to try to find ya way back to Tirra-li ’afore it were ya fated time to travel. And it be wrong o’ us—”

  “That’s complete nonsense,” exclaimed Pinto, forestalling the comment that seemed about to emerge from Finch. “A lot of superstitious nonsense.”

  “Sure, and be it your hard luck to say so,” answered Paisley darkly. “I reckon your mater be sleeping ya poor tonight to hear you say so.”

  “Well, she can’t hear me, can she?” said Pinto in disgust. “Being as there’s Void knows how many windows between us.”

  “It be not fit
to scorn ya pattern,” Paisley continued, undeterred. Her confidence was clearly beginning to have an effect on the other three Ridanis, who cast nervous glances by turns at the pale hulk of the ship, at Paisley, and, last, at Lily.

  Lily unstrapped herself, keeping one hand gripped to the armrest. “That’s enough, Paisley. I’ll take three to board. Jenny, the Mule, and—” she hesitated. “Yehoshua.”

  “No,” said the Mule.

  Finch gave a snort of disgust. “What, are you superstitious, too?” he asked, happy to include the Mule in the circle of contempt he otherwise reserved for the Ridanis.

  “I suggest we keep this civilized,” interposed Lily quietly, well able to read the Mule’s body language as it reacted to Finch’s comment. “Do you have any objection to the orders, comrade?” she asked.

  The Mule’s lank crest lifted slightly, as if a breeze stirred the cabin. The gaze it shot at Lily might have seared cold steel. No reply was forthcoming.

  “Then if you have no objection—” began Lily, but even as she said it she saw the curl of the Mule’s hands, the set of the face, as it settled into a stubborn posture. It looked as if it were digging in for a long, determined resistance. She could see that the Mule would not explain itself publicly, and certainly not when all attention was focused on the conflict. “If you’ll come with me,” she finished, “we’ll discuss this privately.”

  “But where—” began Finch, knowing full well that this cabin was the only compartment on the ship that held atmosphere.

  “In the suit airlock to the cargo hold,” replied Lily, cutting him off. “Just don’t vent us, please.”

  The Mule let out a brief hiss that was too sta-ish for Lily to interpret, but rose and followed Lily back to the airlock. Lily keyed it open, waited a few silent minutes, and then stepped inside and shut it behind them.

  “Well?”

  “You are unfamiliar with sta, are you not?” said the Mule. The tiny chamber and thin dusting of air swallowed the words.

  Lily shrugged.

  “Have you ever seen any sta doing suited work? In vacuum?” When Lily did not reply, the Mule gave a sibilant sigh and arched its crest again. “I am sta enough, comrade,” the Mule continued, stiffly formal now, not a little offended, “that I too am unable to work suited in a vacuum, despite my human half.” Here the Mule’s voice descended into all-too-human sarcasm.

  “All right,” said Lily. “You’ll stay here, for now.” She paused, began to ask why the Mule had forced this private audience, and immediately thought better of it. That pride could stick on even such a seemingly innocuous subject was no surprise to her, and certainly not with the Mule, who would have no desire to express such a—failing?—in front of people who already had cause to be prejudiced against it. She keyed the airlock open instead to reveal the expectant silence of the cabin.

  “Lia, take comm,” Lily ordered. “Finch, you’ll board with us.”

  The four of them suited up, hooked on lines, and left the ship via the cargo airlock. Yehoshua and Jenny, inured by practice to the experience, fired up immediately to cross the thousand meters between the shuttle and the bulk of the Forlorn Hope.

  But Lily and Finch hesitated, side by side, caught in the exhilaration of freedom and the vast emptiness surrounding them. All the soldiers in Jehane’s forces were trained in suits, but for those still new to it, like Lily and Finch, there had not been enough training to dull the sheer wild rush of adrenalin.

  Lily clicked on her mike with her tongue. “After all those years on Unruli, this is hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said softly.

  She heard Finch sigh. With an old instinct for his thoughts resurrected from their closeness on Unruli by the intimacy of their link within such immensity, she knew that he was thinking of his sister, so newly dead.

  “Yehoshua wants to bury his cousin in the Void,” he said at last, his voice quiet. “Just vent him. It seems strange to me.”

  Lily stared at the infinite depth of stars, at the grey curve of cold planet beyond the Forlorn Hope, at the slow, bright rise of the distant Landfall sun above the shuttle’s top vane. “I don’t know,” she answered. “It’s not such a bad place to rest.” She moved to catch Yehoshua and Jenny in her line of sight, discovered that they were almost halfway to the derelict. “Come on, Finch. Let’s go.”

  “Do you suppose it is a ghost ship?” Finch asked as their packs fired them across the gap.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. That Paisley sure seems certain about her superstitious—” He broke off. “Why are you laughing?”

  “Just surprised. I didn’t know you even knew her name. Paisley, that is.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, defensive. “Sure, she’s a tattoo, but you have to admit she’s uncommon pretty no matter what her—” He stopped speaking abruptly, as if he had said something overly revealing.

  “I was just surprised, Finch,” Lily replied. “You haven’t been exactly friendly to the Ridanis.”

  “I still don’t see why I should be,” he muttered. “Bunch of damn—” The rest of the comment was lost to indiscriminate static across the line.

  “Anyway,” said Lily. “If it is the Forlorn Hope, the original, there can’t be anyone left alive. It’s been far too long. I’m amazed we stumbled across it.”

  “So am I. That signal is so weak it’s incredible that we caught it.” Finch sounded almost irritated, but it was hard to tell over the mike. “But you’ve always been lucky.”

  “I have?” She had no time to debate this point because they reached the ship. Yehoshua had already located an outside seal, halfway around the curve of the ship, and he beckoned to them. By the time they arrived at his position, he had managed to open it, revealing an airlock that led inside.

  “Maintenance shaft, I’d wager,” said Yehoshua over the mike. There was easily enough room for all four of them, and once the outer lock shut, Lily felt an immediate shift in her balance, a tug toward one wall.

  “This place gives me the spooks,” said Jenny abruptly as the inside lock sighed slowly open onto an empty, silver-walled corridor. “You’d think it was still alive …” She trailed off as Lily took the first, hesitant step into the Forlorn Hope, paused, and read the narrow screen on her lower suit arm.

  “We still have atmosphere,” Lily said. “That’s incredible, after all this time.” She glanced at Finch. “Maybe there are ghosts on board.”

  But they found no one living, and no bodies, dead, decayed, or otherwise. What signs of human habitation there were had the look of tidy, shipshape readiness, as if a crew was about to board, not as if it had carelessly or hastily abandoned the vessel.

  At first they wandered, rather lost, through a seeming maze of silver corridors. The barest gleam of light heralded their path. Eventually Lily relayed on the hand-pack back to Bach, and discovered a fact that somehow did not particularly surprise her: the little robot was completely familiar with the design specifications of the so-called highroad fleet. She used his rather convoluted directions to lead them along more silver corridors to an elevator that, at his directions, carried them to a new deck.

  This one was gold, textured, and patterned, glowing with an incandescent gleam, like the ghost of the ship’s past life. The way to the bridge proved almost deceptively simple.

  The bridge itself had a refinement, an efficiency of design, that in a subtle way put the ostentatious command centers of La Belle’s and Yi’s ships to shame. Streamlined and sleek, like the Forlorn Hope itself, it was easy to find and bring to life the various consoles, to identify their purpose, even in the gloom of minimum lighting.

  Finch discovered the comm and quickly sat down and went to work. In minutes, he had opened a line to the shuttle.

  Jenny found and studied weapons. Yehoshua settled in at life support and began to bring up an array of functions on the console. Lily, on her way to the engineering link, paused beside the captain’s chair.

  On impulse, sh
e keyed in for the log, tried once, twice, three times. Used the relay to Bach, and tried his new commands.

  The log had been wiped clean. There was no sign if the damage was deliberate or accidental. Thoughtful, she crossed to the engineer’s link and, with Blue kibitzing through Bach, pulled up the function banks.

  Suddenly the lights came on, brilliant, glaring. Softened abruptly to a smoother brightness. She turned to see Yehoshua removing his head gear; gasped—like the lights coming on—and then caught herself as Bach sang a question, and she relaxed.

  After a few minutes, when Yehoshua did not die, she took her own head gear off, quickly followed by Finch. Jenny, with a grimace, kept hers on at Lily’s command.

  “Well?” Lily asked, gesturing toward the consoles, which had come to life at the hands of these interlopers.

  Yehoshua shook his head. For the first time since Alsayid’s death, his face bore a look of animation. “It’s as if,” he began, slowly, careful of his words, “they shut it all down, all but the absolute lowest level maintenance and drive functions, just put it on hold and then left. I can’t imagine what would cause them to do such a thing, or where they might have gone.”

  “Or how,” added Finch, his voice an echo of Yehoshua’s astonishment. “If this is the Forlorn Hope.”

  “Can you doubt it?” asked Yehoshua.

  Finch shook his head in agreement. “How could they just leave—” He set his lips together, thinking. “Unless there are bodies in cryo on one of the lower decks. Or just plain bodies.”

  “I hope the channel to the shuttle is closed,” said Lily cautiously. “We’ll never get the Ridanis on the ship if they hear that. Yehoshua, we need a working hold that can bring in the shuttle.”

  He made an affirmative noise and began keying through the systems files.

  “All right,” said Lily, when he had found what she needed. “You and Finch relay through Pinto and Lia, and bring them in. Jenny, you and I will go down to meet them.”

  Lily sealed her head gear back on for the trip down to the holds level. They took their time, wandering as they went, this time armed with a tight relay to Bach, who kept them oriented.