by Kate Elliott
“Let me see.”
He explained the basics to her. She watched him engage the system and begin calling through the ship. As surprised responses filtered back, she went over to Bach. The robot was singing happily, deep into the life support systems, which he proclaimed in glorious counterpoint to be working perfectly as he brought each one out of manual call-up and into auto-function. Lily shook her head and walked across to weapons.
She spent some time with Nguyen, puzzling through the array of screens, and finally recommended he bring Bach over once the robot had finished engaging all full-support systems.
Last, and most apprehensively, she crossed to stand between pilot and nav stations. Seeing her, Pinto peeled back the stillstrap and stretched his arms and legs. He looked tired.
“Well?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Just like any other boat. If this really is the last of the old highroad fleet, this harness is the model on which every Reft spacer is built. If I had to make a comparison, I’d say that the vectoring alignments are a little more fluid here—not a problem for me, but a less accurate pilot might slide too far and miss their angle.” In the chair, and despite the profusion of tattoos covering every millimeter of exposed skin that under any other circumstances of birth would have proscribed him from entering such a prestigious profession, he looked relaxed and completely at home.
“Pinto,” she asked abruptly, but quietly, “why did you decide to become a pilot?”
He considered her, his expression turning suddenly caustic. “Why do you think? A deep-seated hunger for freedom from that part of my heritage that has marked me for life.” He lifted a slender hand to touch the geometric patterns that defined and accentuated the lines of his face.
“Pinto,” said Lily drily, “your martyrdom has long since ceased to make me feel uncomfortable. Most people go into piloting because they score very high on those particular aptitude tests.”
“Do you suppose that anyone bothered to give me aptitude tests?”
“I don’t know. I always thought that was the one profession that didn’t allow exceptions.”
Pinto levered himself out of the chair and stood with one hand resting on the blank panel that separated pilot’s nest from the nav bank.
He smiled, still caustic. “That’s right, and I got the highest scores they’d seen in a generation. Now, if I may, I’d like to go off-shift.”
Lily nodded slowly. “Take four hours. We’ll do a complete status check then.”
He left, and she turned to the nav banks. The Mule was busy, keying in numbers, testing screens and logistics, all with a studied air of ignoring what took place just beyond its shoulders. Lily watched it for a while.
“You seem comfortable here,” she said finally. “And you certainly seem to be taking well to the system.”
The Mule stopped and carefully turned to give Lily the benefit of its full attention. It wrinkled up its muzzle in what she recognized as a sta-ish grimace of approval: not a smile as humans might know it, being both more comprehensive of approval and less specific of humor.
“I thank you,” said the Mule, surprising her. “For giving me this opportunity. I have long wished to invest my talents where they are best utilized. Before now, I have only had intermittent opportunities to be allowed at nav. And this system!” Its crest lifted and subsided at some emotion she could not name. “A pleasure. Simply a pleasure. Clearly made for the less agile human abilities and yet curiously without the rigid framework necessary to sta calculation and implementation. For instance, the preliminary ought calc function—”
Lily stood stunned by this uncharacteristic effusion. Fortunately the Mule seemed oblivious to her speechlessness and continued with great vigor of expression and tone to illustrate the details of the system to her. She was further amazed by how much it had dissected of the nav bank in so short a time, but she thought it prudent not to interrupt, even for praise.
Eventually, the Mule paused, fingers splayed across a monitor, half-hiding the scroll of numbers that coursed along underneath. That is the basic system. I fear that to one untrained in navigation the rest of the bank might seem inexplicable.”
“I think it might.” Lily allowed herself a brief smile. Some instinct for the Mule’s uncertain temper made her keep her voice neutral. “You seem well in control here. We’ll do a status check interlinking all systems in four hours.”
The Mule nodded, a little absently, already engrossed in a new set of functions coming up on the monitor.
Lily turned away and saw Finch regarding her. He followed her as she walked to the door of the bridge, where she paused, looking at him expectantly.
He glanced at the Mule across the long width of the bridge. “How did he get to be a pilot?” he asked in a low voice. “That tattoo?”
“His name is Pinto,” said Lily in a tired voice. “And while you’re under my command, comrade Caenna, you will stop calling them ‘tattoos.’”
Finch stiffened. “What happened to our friendship?” he asked, tight. “I knew you long before any of these people did. I used to think I was your closest friend.”
“You were. But I have different responsibilities now.”
“Yes,” he answered bitterly. “Now you have a psychotic lover. And more important associates in higher places. But I still can’t understand why you favor a filthy tat—” He broke off. “A damned Ridani so much. But I suppose he must be some Senator’s son.”
His sarcasm was too obvious to be lost on her. At that moment, the door sighed aside to reveal Jenny, poised to enter. The mercenary’s eyes widened, taking in the little tableau, and she hesitated.
“Actually, he is,” said Lily, and walked through the door. It exhaled shut behind her, leaving her in the gold deck corridor with Jenny.
“What was that all about?” Jenny asked mildly.
“Robbie Malcolm, known as Pero to you, once gave me a lecture on something he called ‘the redistribution of wealth,’ which I didn’t pay much attention to at the time. But thinking back on it, I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with what that was all about.”
Jenny shook her head. “Don’t start in on trade averages to me. You House miners are all alike—everything is economics to you.”
Lily laughed. “Please. Don’t accuse me of that particular virtue. Although I expect I absorbed some through no fault of my own. It’s hard not to when it’s the main topic of every clan supper conversation.”
“Was it really?” Jenny sounded sincerely curious. She smiled. “No wonder you ran when you had the chance. What did you want me for?”
“Actually, I confess that I’ve forgotten. But I’d like to spend some time just walking the ship to get the lay of her. I feel very uncomfortable not knowing my physical ground.”
“At your orders, comrade.”
They stopped first at comp/tac, and found comrade Wei ensconsced beside Diamond, working slowly but stubbornly through the top layers of the system, trying to get a feel for their structure. They had not made much progress, but Lily felt they could be trusted to be careful and as thorough as their limited experience allowed.
“In any case,” she said to Jenny as they left, “we won’t get any real progress there until we hook back up with Jehane. He’ll have experts. We’re doing well to have cobbled together as much of a qualified crew as we have now.”
They took the elevator to the lowest deck and worked their way back up.
In engineering, Paisley and Blue had established an uneasy truce based mostly on their mutual desire to gain a working knowledge of the engines. The Green Room, on bronze deck, proved to be a vast jungle of vegetation in a chamber whose dimensions and shape Lily could not measure from inside of it. She chose not to venture far. On silver deck they stopped first at Medical—Kyosti showed no change—and then explored the warren of crew cabins: although small, each cabin was cleverly designed to give the illusion of more space.
They finished their circuit of silver deck with a
stop at the galley. Entering the empty but markedly well-appointed mess hall, they could hear voices raised in some land of argument from the kitchens beyond. Lily recognized Pinto’s voice first.
“—and anyway, I still say it’s unnatural.”
“Unnatural!” Lily could not quite place this second voice. “You don’t believe that anymore than I do, Jonathan. You just say that because—”
Jenny chuckled.
Glancing at her, Lily realized that her eyes were bright with unshed tears, looking both happy and sad at the same time. “What is it, Jenny?” she asked softly.
“—and you know you would never have had the chance if your own mother hadn’t been faithful all those years,” continued the second voice, forceful and definite as a self-confident orator. “So you can’t tell me that—”
“I think Lia’s finally found a home—no—a place that she can call hers. Her—her ground, if you will.”
“That’s Lia?” But even as she said it, Lily realized that it was indeed Lia scolding Pinto in a tone of voice Lily herself had only once or twice dared take with the sulky Ridani.
“You ought to be thankful that you’ve fallen in with people who treat you decently, instead of complaining—”
Lily could not possibly imagine what expression Pinto might be wearing under this assault. “But Lia is so—quiet.” Lily looked hopelessly at Jenny, shrugging to make the statement a question.
Jenny grinned. “You never saw Lia lecturing the other Senators’ daughters, the other rich girls, on the unfairness of them using illicit birth control while other women went without, or held willingly to the laws and did their civic duty. Not that those girls didn’t have every opportunity open to them in any case, no matter how many, or how few, children they had.”
“Even on Unruli you only had to have two children to qualify for university, given that you passed the basic test scores.”
“I still don’t understand why you, coming from such a well-to-do House, didn’t just opt for that choice.”
“I don’t know.” Lily considered. “Perhaps it was always fated that I’d someday meet and bond, however symbolically, with Pero. I always thought it was unfair that my brothers and male cousins had to work so hard for a chance to get in. Even Finch once confessed he’d have liked to go to university, but he never got high enough scores.”
“There you are,” said Jenny.
“It’s all very well for you to call it decent,” said Pinto from the other room, “because no one sneers under their hands at you, or calls you names in whispers—”
“I’m sorry, Jonathan, but you are so self-centered, so—spoiled from growing up, that you think every action any other person makes is directed at you. When in fact most people don’t even notice you’re around—I’ve learned that these past seven odd years, very clearly.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you weren’t spoiled? The Honorable Aliasing Sephor Feng?”
“Of course I was spoiled,” said Aliasing quietly in a voice more recognizable to Lily. “We all were, in Central. But at least I tried to look past myself to other people’s problems.”
“Well, I confess myself surprised,” said Lily to Jenny.
“About Lia?” Jenny shook her head. “She always had her opinions. She spoke out without any self-consciousness. Her mother thought it was a sign she’d inherit the Senate seat, that she’d give up her radical leanings when she grew up, but I’m not so sure. Anyway, after Mendi Mun betrayed us, and Lia got uprooted from the only home she knew, she grew into herself.”
“As if she no longer had a center on which to focus from?”
“I suppose. Some people can find that center within themselves, and carry it with them, but I think most people are still rooted in that sense to planets: they need a ground, a physical place to call home.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been wandering for so long I’ve lost track.”
“—oh, Jonathan,” said Lia from the galleys in a tone of utter disgust. “Why shouldn’t Lily wonder why you became a pilot? You know perfectly well you’re the only Ridani pilot there is. You also know very well that the only reason you did it is because it was the most expensive and infamous way to humiliate your father publicly, after he threw your poor mother off his estate when he decided to seal a bond with that fluff-head Arabinthia.”
“How do you know? You’d already gone by then—you and Jenny and that Mun fellow.”
“Yes, but I know you perfectly well. After that time you managed to get into the Senate chambers and embarrass your father because he wouldn’t let you sleep with Mafecta’s daughter—”
“It seems to me,” said Lily quickly, “that this is beginning to get personal.”
Jenny nodded, and they left.
Returning to the bridge, they found Yehoshua sitting at the auxiliary tac bank, trying to get the scanning system up. Lily discovered that Bach had long since brought on-line all the support systems and was now busy tinkering with the temperature readings of individual cabins, none of which were occupied or likely to be in the near future. She whistled him off and escorted him, while he protested in elegant four-voice harmony, back to the computer center, where she had him take her and Jenny and Yehoshua through the main outline of the ship’s functions step-by-step. Pinto turned up eventually, looking none the worse for his heated discussion with Aliasing, and he paused to watch. Wei and Diamond wandered in from tac.
“We’re late for the status check,” said Lily eventually. “Bach, as from now, you run comp.”
Patroness, Bach sang happily, it would please me most exceedingly to serve you in such wise. This vessel beareth indeed a fine, if rather unintelligent, network. I confess to you that at my previous station when we began to discuss systems protocol, I was sadly disabused of my belief that this system went beyond the lower functions—
She whistled an interrupt, and Bach ceased singing. “After we’re settled. For now—”
Affirmative, patroness, replied Bach respectfully.
“Then everyone else to the bridge,” said Lily, “except Wei and Diamond.”
They filed out, took positions in silence at the bridge. After a brief hesitation, Lily sat down gingerly in the captain’s chair. It did not bite back. She called up the monitor and opened the log.
“This is Lilyaka Ash Heredes, commandeering the Forlorn Hope for Jehane’s Provisional Armed Forces. We will now attempt to bring all systems on-line. Comrade Blumoris.” From the depths of the com, his voice answered her hail. He sounded nervous. “Give me the engines.”
The pause that followed seemed, like a window, infinitely long, and yet the merest instant.
And then the Forlorn Hope’s engines came to life.
17 Bloodhunt
YEHOSHUA WAS ADAMANT. “WE hunt down the cruiser that destroyed Franklins Cairn, and destroy it.” Glancing at Lily’s impassive face, he added, tactfully, “That’s my recommendation.”
“You just want revenge,” said Jenny.
They had gathered in the tac room, whose layout and large conference table was designed for such meetings. Only Rainbow and Kyosti were not there. Bach had been left on scan on the bridge. Even Gregori sat next to Lia, hugging his knees to his chest as he stared solemnly at the proceedings. The Forlorn Hope rode at the very fringe of Landfall system, broken free of its frozen captor’s grip, thrown through all of its paces except the window itself, and proven functional on all levels that the inexperienced crew could cobble together for testing.
“Yes,” agreed Yehoshua vehemently. “I want revenge.”
“If you’ll consider,” said Lily slowly, tracing the monitor’s graph of Landfall system with a pointer of light, “we have to return to Landfall Station in any case, or here, to Landfall Far Horizon, to get vector stats so that we can get out of this system.”
“But is it worth the risk of testing this ship in action when we hardly know her ourselves?” asked Jenny.
No one ventured to
answer this question.
“If I may,” said the Mule at last. Lily nodded. “Our nav bank is woefully inadequate. We possess incomplete coordinates for Reft space, and a curiously complete set of coordinates for an area of this galaxy that I do not recognize. And linking the two regions, contradictory information, which leads me to believe that this vessel got lost trying to navigate from Reft space back to the place I can only deduce it must have come from in the first place.”
“Sure,” said Paisley, “and glory. Tirra-li.”
Lily surveyed the group, seeing astonishment on every face except Gregori’s.
“Then it’s really true,” said Finch. “There really is a lost way to get back to the home planets. They really do exist back there.”
“That may be,” said the Mule fluidly, “but this ship has little chance of making such a journey given the lacuna in its bank.”
“It came close enough,” Jenny remarked.
Yehoshua tapped the tabletop thoughtfully with his real hand. He looked at Lily. “Jehane will want those coordinates.”
The words, simple enough, brought back to Lily a vivid memory of her first meeting with Jehane: he had been convinced—perhaps still was—that she herself was from across the way, was from the place she knew now as the League, and that she could tell him how to get there.
Then she remembered Master Heredes’s warning: That a man like Jehane wouldn’t like knowing that such power existed. And she wondered if perhaps Jehane wanted not to go there himself, but rather to prevent others from going, or from coming into the Reft.
The sudden flash of memory subsided as abruptly as it had come. She shook her head, doubting the veracity of her insight. Jehane could only benefit from opening up the route back to the League.
“Yes,” she said to Yehoshua. “Jehane will indeed want to know.” She looked back at the Mule. “But I think you have something more to say?”
The Mule hissed, affirmative. “It is necessary that we gain a complete nav bank, one as complete as any Reftwide merchanter can purchase. Or a better one, if we can get it. Even with Station-provided coordinates, and restricting ourselves to small hops, it will be risky running the highroad.”