“I’m not a back shooter.”
“One of your few weaknesses. Come sit beside me, brother.”
Donovan crouched on Billy’s left. “Brother? You and I are nothing alike.”
Billy did not turn his head. “I did not mean bio-brother.”
“Nor did I.”
“No. We are sons of the same trainer—years apart, but the semen of his mind has generated us. You are the prodigal son, and I the faithful. You have gone off and lived among the pigs.”
“It wasn’t that bad. Really.” After a moment, he said, “You killed the jawharry.”
Billy tilted his head in thought; then resumed his watch of the catwalk. “After I overheard you and the harper in the restaurant on Harpaloon, curiosity sent me to question the woman. But she knew nothing. The effort was wasted.”
Donovan heard a distant clatter, like a wheel rolling along jointed rails. It seemed louder than before. “Yes,” he said. “Such a waste.”
“Not so much of a such. In the eternity of the universe, what is a life but an eye-blink. What matter, then, a few years more or less?”
“Yet you saved Méarana on the endarooa.”
“Am I a sociopath? Do I kill for no reason? The harper drove our quest, and I wished to see what lay at its end. And saving her caused you to trust me a little bit more. My duty is to report to Those what they need to know, not to slaughter unsuspecting Leaguesmen.”
“Although you do that, too.”
Billy shrugged. “Sometimes. When needful.”
“When Bridget ban recognized you.”
The Confederate nodded. “Yes. That was one of the times.”
“You could have bluffed it out. Méarana would have vouched for you. You panicked. Listen.”
Above them, from the depths of the ship, came the sounds of shingling metal, like a wind chime in a blustery gale.
“Something is coming,” Donovan said. “You might make it out of here if we all work together. You’ll never make it alone.”
Billy Chins sighed. “Brother Donovan, from the moment I saw this ship and learned of the secret road, was there ever a chance that I would return to my masters?”
“We could have arranged…”
“A comfortable prison? No, thank you. There are simpler ways to silence tongues. If you are too squeamish, others are not. I judged the moment my best opportunity, and seized it.”
“And yet you fought by my side at Roaring Gorge and in the Pit atop Oorah Mesa.”
The Confederate shrugged. “I thought then that I might yet warn the Lion’s Mouth. Now, if I cannot inform my masters, at the very least I can prevent you from informing yours. If you and the Hound die, I count my life cheap.”
“And the trade ship?”
“She must not take word back.”
“And the harper?”
Billy hesitated. “It cannot be helped.”
Donovan sighed. “I will not let that happen.”
“I know. If only you had remained a loyal man.”
“If only you had become a better one.”
One does not chat with Naga the Cobra without a vigilant eye on his motion, for the words are but a screen to lull the attention. Inner Child had been keeping watch through the scarred man’s right eye and saw Billy’s hand move perhaps before Billy knew he had moved it. The Brute seized the gun arm and deflected the aim, although the umbra grazed him; and that gave Billy the opening to deflect Donovan’s own return blast.
Locked in embrace like eager lovers, the two men toppled to the decking, and a swift sequence of moves and countermoves passed between them. Hands, knees, feet, a head butt. Then Billy smacked Donovan’s hand on the maintenance walkway, and the scarred man’s dazer skittered out of reach.
They fought in silence, only grunts and gasps escaping their lips, for only fools waste breath in taunts. They rolled, still embraced, over the edge of the pod block.
And they were “atop” the side of the tanks. Donovan glanced at the catwalk and barked, “Hurry!”
Billy turned his head, realized the trick immediately, but immediately was too late. Instead of holding off Billy’s gun, Dononan yanked and tucked it between their two bodies, pressing the muzzle against the Confederate.
This close, the neural blast was overpowering. Billy spasmed. His legs splayed like two logs and his head threw back. Blood oozed from between his clenched teeth.
Donovan, caught in the umbra, went numb. He rolled to the side; but it was the gravity grid and not volition that moved him. Inner Child cried out soundlessly. Sleuth could not form a coherent thought. Random memories and imaginings flickered through his consciousness.
A young girl in a chiton squatted above him on her heels and with her arms wrapped around her knees. The others, she said, will now have a chance.
He saw the face of Bridget ban, and she smiled as she used to smile years ago. He blinked and it was Méarana, not Bridget. Then even the tingling in his limbs faded, and there was no sensation at all, and darkness had him.
Lucia Thompson, d.b.a. Méarana of Dangchao, mistress of the harp, turned to her mother, feeling once more a child, but also impossibly old, and buried her face in Bridget ban’s hair and shoulders. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” she said. At her feet, Donovan and Billy lay like lovers.
The Hound pulled her away and shook her. “It isn’t ended yet,” she said.
The ship’s AI had come awake, and had dispatched the same monster that she had encountered once before. Slinky-Chinky, she had called it, for it moved fluidly with the sound of brass coins falling onto a plate.
“Lucy!” she said sharply to the weeping girl. “We must get to my ship. Time afterward for weeping, if there is time for anything at all. There’s his dazer. Hand it to me.”
“Your ship is wrecked, Mother. And how can we find our way to the shuttle I came in?”
“Fash it, girl! I can find my ship, whether she can fly or no. And you can have your shuttle meet us there. Nothing is lost until all is lost, and that time is not yet.” The Hound unfastened a pocket and pulled out a flat instrument. “This way.”
Méarana brushed her hand against the Fudir’s cheek. “Good-bye, Father…,” she said.
Bridget ban scowled and slapped the slack face of the man on the deck. It rocked to the side, and the bright red of her palm glowed on his skin. “That is for all the years since!”
“Mother! Why did you do that?”
“Because he can’t feel it now.” She stared at the palmprint. “Come, take his left side. He’s a used-up old man. He can’t be all that heavy.”
Méarana and Bridget ban lifted Donovan to his feet and wrapped his arms around their shoulders. The head lolled on Bridget ban’s shoulder and she shrugged it off onto her daughter.
“Is he…?”
“Enough to show red when he’s slapped. That is a feat few dead men master. Run in step with me. Slinky-Chinky will come along the catwalks. If we stay atop the tanks, it cannae reach us. But when we cross the space from one block to another, it will have a shot. And remember, the catwalks run in three directions.”
“I’m not afraid to die, Mother, if I’m at your side.”
The Hound laughed. “And terrified at any other time? It’s nae death ye risk, bairn. It will stun ye and stuff ye like sausage into one of yon pods. I will shoot you myself before I allow that to happen.”
Méarana did not have her harp with her, but her voice was true and she sang a running song while she and her mother loped across the tops of the sleep tanks, holding Donovan between them. She maintained an easy gait, holding his arm around her neck with her left, and holding the belt of his coveralls with her right, lifting his feet slightly above the ground. She did not know how long she and Mother could carry him; but she did not know how long she could not carry him, either.
They stopped to rest and catch their breath, and listened to the metallic sounds of their pursuer draw ever closer. Bridget ban had set her beacon to respond with
sharper pings as they drew nearer to where her field office lay. Méarana contacted Franq and told him where to rendezvous.
“Not a beat too soon,” Number Two said. “Wrathrock is bad hurt, but we secured the shuttle and we are now outside the ship. What are those things?”
“Proctors,” Méarana told him. “The ship is delusional. Her internal clock is disrupted; her sensors scrambled. She thinks we are wakened sleepers—and you are boarders.”
“Can’t gainsay her on that account,” said the officer. “We are a boarding party.”
As they resumed their flight, Donovan began to run on his own. It was a peculiar and intensely focused sort of running and when Méarana and Bridget ban let go, he jogged ahead for a few steps, then turned and awaited direction.
“Is that you, Brute?” the harper asked; and the man nodded dumbly.
“Did Silky revive you? She’s got all the glands, right?” Again a nod.
“Are the others okay?”
The Brute placed his hand about three feet off the ground, palm flat and level to the ground. Then he spread his hands and shrugged.
“Inner Child is awake, but you don’t know about the others?” Another nod.
“Another day,” said Bridget ban just before leading them off again, “if there is another day, you will have to explain that, if there is an explanation.”
They had reached the edge of yet another block when the Brute paused, crouched, and held his hand up. Bridget ban went to her knees in an instant; Méarana, a moment later. The metallic jingling had waxed and around the corner of the catwalk came a monster.
It was a machine, like the Attendant and the Proctor, but unlike any machine Méarana had seen before. A centipede of metal hoops, each self-powered, yet all marching forward in rough uniformity. The lead ring bore the seeming of a face. Partly that was the spotlight eyes and the grill where a mouth might be; partly too, the fringe of antennae and sensors that so resembled a bristling mane.
As it passed each intersection, rings scattered clattering and clinging down the four intersecting catwalks—left, right, up, and down. At the same time, other rings, scattered at the previous intersection, rejoined the main body. The whole seemed in a continual state of dissolution, on the verge always of breaking apart, and yet, despite the comings and goings of its constituent rings, maintaining its identity.
Bridget ban consulted her beacon. “This way,” she whispered, pointing forward and to the right. “Yon beastie does nae yet stand’ tween us and my ship.”
Méarana tugged the Brute on the sleeve, held a finger to her lips, and pointed. The Brute nodded and slipped off in silence.
“Will the rest of him e’er come back?” Bridget ban murmured.
“That may depend on how the umbra affected the cortex. Had the muzzle twisted the other way…” The harper shivered. “Did you see the way he looked at you?”
“I had a dog that used to look at me that way,” Bridget ban answered.
“When did you ever have a dog? What happened to him?”
“He went rabid and I shot him.”
It was a mad race in three dimensions. They stayed atop the pod blocks, but in places the extensible bridge connecting one block to the next failed, and they slipped down to the regular catwalks. Without Bridget ban’s locator beacon they would quickly have gotten lost.
It was while on the catwalks that one of Slinky-Chinky’s scouts found them. It rounded the corner just ahead of them and instantly, lights began to flash on its circumference and the sounds of activity came from below. Through the gaps in the catwalks they saw the main snake two levels below them turn abruptly and head up the next intersection.
The Brute meanwhile had taken his dazer, which Bridget ban had restored to him, and fired at anything that might have been a brain-case on the ring that had found them. The ring went dark, and the three of them retreated around the corner and scrambled like monkeys atop the tanks. There, they lay prone underneath the maintenance track, in the V where the cylinders nestled together.
In less than a minute the sound of clinking rings was all around them, as segments ran up and down the catwalks, joining and splitting and rejoining. It’s as if the tanks themselves are invisible to them, Méarana thought. A flaw in their instructions? A malfunction from age or from damage? Not my department?
Finally, the sounds of pursuit faded into another sector, and they crawled from under the maintenance track and raced for the vestibule. There, they paused to activate their helmets before cycling through the air lock.
Orienting themselves on Bridget ban’s locator, they quickly made their way through an open landing bay to the hull and Bridget ban’s wrecked field office. There, they called for the Blankets and Beads’ shuttle.
Wild Bill brought the boat in low, with the outer lock door already open and came to a hover only a few strides away. Méarana and Bridget ban hustled Donovan inside and Wild Bill was pulling away even before the lock had closed.
“Close call,” said Méarana as they found seats in the cabin.
Wild Bill did not turn around. “Still is.”
The shuttle bucked and twisted as the pilot used the gravity impellers to hopscotch across the Prabhakaran’s hull. Franq sat in the copilot’s seat and the two able spacers were in the back. One of them, badly injured, lay across a bench while the other treated him.
“Watch it, Bill,” Franq said. “Those portals are opening.”
“That can’t be good,” Donovan muttered. Then he shook himself and looked around.
Méarana noticed, and said, “Fudir? Are ye back wi’ us?” And at the scarred man’s uncertain nod, threw her arms around his neck. He winced.
“Silky must have put us in some sort of overdrive. I’m weak as a kitten.” He looked around and saw Bridget ban and for a moment he did not speak. The red hair seemed lighter than when he had last known her, or the golden skin darker. “Billy?”
“Coagulated,” the Hound said. “What did you do, push your dazer right up against him? That’s a fool thing to try. The backlash of the umbra…”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. That dazer was going to be pointed somewhere. I preferred him to me. We debated the issue some.”
The shuttle swerved suddenly. The deckhand—DeRoche—cursed.
“Something behind those portals. Weapons, I think,” Franq said. “I think we woke something up.”
“The Artificial Intelligence,” said Donovan.
“Father, if that Attendant was artificially intelligent, the concept has been quite oversold.”
“No, Lucia,” Donovan answered. “Peacharoo was no more intelligent than my little finger.” The which he held up in illustration. “But you do have to ask what was wiggling it.”
Lights in the craft flared and went dark. Wild Bill expressed his dissatisfaction with this and his hands danced in command. Emergency lighting returned. “Missed us,” he said. DeRoche, tending to his mate, muttered, “I’d hate to see a hit, then.”
“Barnsey’s bringing the BB to meet us,” the pilot announced. “Hangar deck is open to vacuum. Locking in—mark.”
“Is that wise?” Bridget ban wondered. “To bring a larger target into range?”
“Prabhakaran’s clock is malfing,” Donovan said. “It thinks it’s still activating the terraformation packages. When the clocks resets, it loops around and does it all over again.”
Wild Bill, having locked in on his landing target, turned in his seat. “That’s nice, Donovan. But how does that make her a poor shot?”
“Velocity is distance over time. If her timing is off, so is her estimate of velocity. Otherwise, she’d have hit us more than once by now.”
“Which means,” said Wild Bill, swinging back to his panel, “she could aim at our nose and hit our engines instead. Either way, we’re soup.”
“And if yon is the trade ship ye’ve spoken of,” said Bridget ban pointing to the forward viewscreens, “even a miss would still hit something.”
&n
bsp; Donovan grunted. “I used to think the B and B was big.”
As the shuttle entered the hangar, Wild Bill put her down hard to the deck. The gravity snaps engaged and held her fast, killing her forward momentum. The hangar doors closed and air dumped in—and with the air came the sound of klaxons. Alfven warnings. The Blankets and Beads was preparing to grab space to yank itself away from Prabhakaran.
Donovan pushed the others aside to reach the air lock. Bridget ban called after him, “There is no place to run to this time, Fudir.” But the Terran popped the door, dropped to the deck, and ran to the intercom on the hangar wall, where he called the bridge.
Maggie B’s face showed. “What is it, Fresh?” Then she scowled. “You! Get off my horn. You’re not crew.”
“No, I’m your charter. When you yank space, turn about and head for Prabhakaran’s dead side. If you pull forward, she can still shoot you out of the sky.”
“Those little pop guns…”
“That is Commonwealth tech! You have not seen a tenth of what that ship can still do. The AI is awake now and thinks she’s defending herself against attack! The apertures on the damaged side are fused shut. It can’t fire from that quarter.”
The captain’s lips compressed into a thin line. “Every time you show up,” she said, “I run into trouble.”
“I’ve only shown up in your life twice.”
“Let’s not make it three.” She turned from the screen. “D.Z., right about on the alfvens. Engage at fifty. Full power. Five tugs.”
By then the others had joined him. Wrathrock was being carried aboard on a floater by the ship’s medico. Franq, Hallahan, and DeRoche had rushed off to their emergency stations. Bridget ban nodded at the now-blank intercom. “Smart advice,” she said. “I expect you are correct.”
“Apology accepted. Come on, let’s get to the control room.”
Méarana led the way and Bridget ban followed. Donovan brought up the rear. Halfway through the tube that connected the shuttle module with the control module, the alfven klaxon hooted a second time—the short-long, short-long warning that engagement was immanent.
They grabbed railings and stanchions, and for an instant the ship seemed to stretch like taffy along a skewed axis. Most captains did not engage alfvens this far down a sun’s gravity well. But Blankets and Beads carried survey-class alfvens and, against escape from the ship defense batteries of A. K. Prabhakaran, what did a few burnt-out capacitors matter?
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