Dragon Ship

by Sharon Lee

  Dragon Ship-eARC

  A New Liaden Universe® Novel

  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  BAEN BOOKS by SHARON LEE & STEVE MILLER

  THE LIADEN UNIVERSE®

  Fledgling

  Saltation

  Mouse and Dragon

  Ghost Ship

  Dragon Ship

  The Dragon Variation (omnibus)

  The Agent Gambit (omnibus)

  Korval’s Game (omnibus)

  The Crystal Variation (omnibus)

  THE FEY DUOLOGY

  Duainfey

  Longeye

  BY SHARON LEE

  Carousel Tides

  To purchase these titles in e-book format,

  please go to www.baen.com

  Dragon Ship

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright ©2012 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

  Liaden Universe® is a registered trademark.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4165-3798-4

  Cover art by David Mattingly

  First Baen printing, September 2012

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  t/k

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to:

  Anne McCaffrey

  …who single-handedly redeemed the

  honor of dragons

  and to:

  Rusty Hevelin

  …who knew everybody

  Prelude

  In Surebleak Transit Orbit, Outgoing

  Patient Win Ton yo’Vala

  Function Change Percentage Report: Treatment Location #03

  Cardiovascular65% > 1%

  Dermal57% < 3%

  Neurological / nervous62% > .9%

  Muscular46% < 2%

  Skeletal83%=

  Lymphatic45% > .1

  Endocrine38% < .1

  Reproductive21%

  Urinary47% =

  Digestive63% =

  SenescenceQuotient53% >

  Retro-senescenceActivity14% =

  Whatever else he might be—and the theories, legends, and outright guesses surrounding that question were legion—the Uncle was a man of his word.

  He had informed Win Ton that his time in the healing unit would be…less quiet than one might suppose. He had explained that there would seem to be progress—and that seeming might equally be true, and less than true.

  Indeed, at first, and in the rare moments when he was fully conscious, the pain seemed less, and he felt, not strong, but stronger. Win Ton, who had been taught by the Scouts to believe the Uncle a man made of deceit, allowed himself to hope for recovery.

  This was an error, for, later, the pain returned, and the weakness grew worse.

  As befit a man of his word, the Uncle had explained these declines in technical terms, inquired after Win Ton’s state of mind, and from time to time spoke of the wider universe, attempting, perhaps, to keep information flowing into a system that was working against itself.

  Oddly, it seemed that the Uncle also was an honest man, which was not necessarily the same as a man who, thus far at least, had kept his promise; and the honest man had come to wake him from a dreamless sleep, Dulsey not in attendance this time, as she had been on former occasions.

  “Scout yo’Vala, it appears that the medics and shipmates who brought you to me have less hope than I do; this is not a surprise, but it is unfortunate. Healers having failed you, physicians having failed you, ordinary medicines having no advantage to offer you, you are left with me, and my chief technologist. Alas, we are not adequate to your survival, either.”

  The Uncle had brought him a robe for what comfort it might give, and he offered a choice of liquid refreshment, ranging from water to fruit juice to salted-soup to high-grade alcohol.

  Win Ton gathered himself together, shrugged the robe more firmly about his shoulders, looking as little as he might at the unnatural shade of his skin or the ice-blank fingernails somehow still attached to his hands. He stared at the offerings, making an effort to fix his mind on them, while sorting the sense of his odd host’s words. Finally, he raised his eyes in wary question.

  He had seen the high security records indicating that this man—or his mind, or his personally experienced knowledge—pre-dated the advent of Liadens into this particular universe and into these particular galaxy clusters. The Uncle had long been involved with the nefarious doings of those who chose to collect items which might also pre-date that arrival, items which might have precipitated and fomented the very wars of crystallization.

  “Do you come to offer me my choice of dooms, then? A pill, a sip of liquor, and I am gone?”

  The Uncle’s mouth twitched as if he thought the question had a touch of humor, though his eyes were unflinching.

  “No,” he answered, “that is not my purpose. I offer you these things as a way to wake you, to stimulate you, and to ready you. For now, having kept you alive after the Scouts could not, I in my turn will relinquish you to another situation. You pass now into the care of the ship you woke, and the crew that mans it, and to the one resource beyond Healers and physicians and engineers and technologists and Scouts, that may, only possibly, aid you.”

  The ship he woke…

  Win Ton bore down in very nearly a physical effort to focus his thoughts, his understanding.

  There—of course. The ship.

  The sentient ship.

  The ship that was the root of this tangle of trouble in which he was embroiled.

  “Bechimo,” he said, finding the name among his soft memories, “has come for me?”

  “Theo Waitley comes for you,” the Uncle corrected, which was…even more surprising. He had thought Theo quit of him, her thoughts and her necessities focused upon kin.

  The Uncle may have read his surprise, for he explained further.

  “She pilots Bechimo,” the Uncle continued, “which carries the last trustworthy sample of yourself. Since Pilot Waitley is alive, and the ship is also alive, it would seem that she may possess that spark of luck which infects all of Korval. I cannot guarantee that her luck will serve you; I merely note and state that it has served her.”

  Win Ton frowned, finding both memory and focus sharper for the moment.

  “Theo is of Korval?” Surely, that was an error. Theo counted herself Terran, born on the academic world of Delgado, properly in line to a scholar-mother and a father nearly nameless.

  “Does this surprise you?” the Uncle’s voice was dry.

  Win Ton held up a trembling hand, doggedly pursuing the memory. Theo’s father had been Liaden, his name ancient, and undoubtedly not his own. He recalled it! In a moment, he felt that he would have even the name—Kiladi. Yes. A joke there. Very nearly a Scout’s joke. But Kiladi, for all it had been Liaden before its dissolution, was no blood-line belonging to Clan Korval. Korval Lines were yos’Phelium, the delm’s blood; yos’Galan, the traders; and…and…bel’Tarda! the subordinate Line.

  He paused a moment, breathing hard with the exertion of recalling all of this, that a child not yet out of
the schoolroom might recite off of the top of his head…

  But with regard to Theo, there had been…something more.

  He closed his eyes, the better to remember—ah, yes.

  Her father had given to Theo a lesson—that she was to call upon the delm of Clan Korval only in the most extreme necessity.

  I am, Win Ton thought, opening his eyes, a fool.

  “No,” he said slowly, recalling too that the Uncle had asked a question. “That Theo is of Korval…does not…entirely…surprise me.”

  His host smiled, and moved a hand, which might have been a hint that Win Ton avail himself of the ignored refreshments.

  Carefully, he selected a pod of juice, not because he favored it, but because he saw no benefit to not feeling all that he could feel.

  The Uncle likewise took up a juice-pod, and for a moment they sipped in companionable silence. Win Ton found his fingers strong enough to slowly collapse the pod and impel the juice into his mouth, but he knew better, now, than to hope.

  “The situation is yet uncertain,” the Uncle said, putting his empty pod on the tray. “We shall not properly dock with Bechimo, but rather use a tube. From our side, you shall be hurried, as the instant occurs. Please accept my regret for this haste, which I fear will dismay you. Against such dismay, I will administer a small stimulant, and at Dulsey’s word that Arin’s Toss is free, I will escort you to the quick-lock, and see you through.

  “First, then, we shall dress you; which means we shall move you, under your own locomotion if possible, into the prep room, where all that you brought with you to my ship is gathered, and from whence we shall hurry at the call. You will carry with you a record of what has transpired in our healing unit, with the current trends. The units Bechimo carries will be able to access and work from these records.” He looked sharply into Win Ton’s face.

  “Do you understand everything I have said to you, Scout yo’Vala? Is there anything you wish to have clarified?”

  Theo was coming for him, as pilot of a ship out of legends even murkier than those which surrounded the man before him. He would be transferred to that ship’s medical unit, which was likely of a provenance that a Scout ought not to think of.

  This was his last hope; in truth. If Bechimo failed him, he would die.

  “I understand,” he told the Uncle. “And I thank you, for your care.”

  * * *

  The tube was taller than he by a hand-span, and the Uncle shoved a small package down in front of him as the first of the cooler air flowed out of the tube, toward themselves, and into the Uncle’s own ship. The darkness gave way to light; there was an opening some distance ahead.

  His clothing disturbed his skin; he been nude in the Uncle’s healing unit, which had turned him, fed him, washed him, dealt with details.

  And to what amazing trust he bore witness, Win Ton thought, alert with the first rush of stimulant. The Uncle was accepting the high-pressure side of a transfer tube! Win Ton stood forward, cooling rapidly in the breeze Bechimo pumped at them.

  There was a line attached to the side of the tube, and the Uncle’s voice behind him.

  “I may not accompany you, nor go into the tube itself. This is your walk from here on. Scout yo’Vala—good lift, and safe landing.”

  A bow was not possible. Nor could he bring himself to say to this man—brigand, outlaw, or saint, as he might variously be—the proper—and very true—Liaden phrase, “I am in your debt.” Still, a safe lift might perhaps have been proper, but the pressure on his back grew firmer, and he leaned into his mission, moving those few steps that were somehow down, his uncertain feet gaining a hazardous momentum, pain thrilling into his legs and along his arms, vibrating into his skull with each step, until of a sudden, Theo’s arms caught him, swung him into the fresh light of another ship. He had gained Bechimo.

  Very nearly, he collapsed. Theo was a whirl of motion, kicking the plate to seal the door, holding him away from the wall, and mustering a strong, firm voice:

  “He’s in. Seal us up!”

  Another voice answered, said things which were out of the range of his understanding. His view was of Theo, wiry, graceful, and strong.

  Korval, he thought. Of course, Korval.

  Balance was nearly beyond him, and he knew better than to perform the ordinary…but he would not fall!

  “Theo,” he tried, and his voice failed him. He gathered himself against his throat.

  “Theo,” he got out this time. “Forgive me, that I do not bow.”

  Chapter One

  Jump

  Theo saw the rim of dust-and-something on her sleeve, sighed and tried not to be annoyed—it wasn’t as if she was waiting for an appointment with a customer, or getting ready for an assignation, after all. Still, as she applied enough torque, manually, to start closing the small hatchway, the accumulation was evident not only on her sleeve but on the surface of the sample filter she’d replaced, and likely on her cheek as well, since she’d been brushed some irritant from there with her ring finger a few moments before.

  She’d knelt to check the torque, and now some of whatever it was that had fallen to the floor.

  Bechimo had thought the whole routine a waste of time, even managing to bring the word “dignity” into the conversation.

  Theo shook her head. Ship’s dignity, indeed!

  There was a smudge of color on the filter—this from an unused room. Really unused. According to Bechimo there hadn’t been anyone in there for hundreds of years! That would bear looking into.

  Dropped and sealed into her stash bag, this was another of a half-dozen items of interest she carried, things she’d share with Clarence when they got together once again in the conference room—or Dining Room Two, if you happened to be Bechimo.

  She was considering the next item on the list, wishing she had help on it since it would be a live-wet line. She’d worked on live-wets a few times at the academy, and several more less unhappy times while working the off-schedule at Hugglelans. At Anlingdin, some of the lines were—Pilot yos’Senchul had called it “misrepresented”—as having been cared for recently, or at all.

  When she’d been back on Eylot, her good friend Kara had called the duty Theo now performed “ship wipe,” complete with an odd Liaden back-channel of meaning. She’d called it that at the academy and at Hugglelans, and while she evinced no particular love for the job, she’d done it dutifully and had said it was educational. Kara had from time to time come back to their shared room at Hugglelans in multiple shades of left-over dirt and dinge, her clothes so smelly that Theo donned disposable gloves to help her into the shower without leaving a permanent record on the walls.

  On the other hand—

  “Stinks, by damn and darn, that’s what we called it where I learned! Stinks!”

  Clarence could have his “stinks,” thought Theo. She preferred “ship wipe,” and not only because she heard it in Kara’s voice.

  She sighed, thinking about Kara as she crawled into corners, purposefully using second line and even third line multi-tool equipment on this stuff. Kara had a good eye for what needed done, not to mention excellent taste in tea and cheese, and a firm hand for a massage, too. She’d also been good at listening to Theo’s doubts while refusing to agree that she was a useless academic kid in over her head in the real universe…

  On her knees on the deck, Theo sighed again. It would be good to see Kara again. She’d been a long time without seeing an old friend—a comfortable old friend. Especially since it seemed like all her new friends—and family members, too—were various degrees of risky to know.

  Still on her knees, she straightened until her spine cracked with released tension.

  Daydreaming wasn’t going to get the job done, and since she was also tracking the duty by time-taken she’d better get to it.

  “Are you recording all this, Bechimo? You got live visuals?”

  A pause. A longish pause. Maybe he was still annoyed at having the dignity of the ship violated
.

  “Pilot,” he said, before the pause got too long, the light, genderless voice just a bit too precise. “The entire process is being recorded in multiple formats as it goes forth, indexed by the day, and will be analyzed when we have more information to measure against it. Existing records of such checks are of little use since—”

  She pffuffed what might have been imaginary dust off her lips—or it might have been recognition that she knew this line already…so she she matched cadence and said it:

  “…the original checks were performed by crew conversant with procedures.”

  It was, unfortunately, an accurate duet, and probably beneath her dignity, as First Board. Theo shook her head.

  “Got that one, Bechimo, thank you. What we can do—the whole point of this, if you’ll please review your records!—is to make sure we’re all up to spec about what needs to be done, how it ought to be done, where things are, what the instructions mean, and how readings are interpreted. Since the Founders aren’t here, and since you’re arguably the only person alive—aside from Uncle—who could possibly be conversant with all of the unique procedures, I’m on my hands and knees cleaning a live-wet. I promise you we’ll either buy or build more remotes, but for now, this is the gig we’ve got.”

  Silence. Well, there wasn’t much to say to that, except she’d implied an order there—

  “Have you reviewed those records?” she asked.

  A pause. She missed having Screen Six available, that being where Bechimo’s visible presence was most often seen, but she imagined it was busy with swirling colors right now. She liked to think that the more the colors swirled, the harder Bechimo was thinking.