A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  Ng raised an eyebrow.

  “They’re the first people to bunny while being a zillion systems apart.”

  “Umm.” Ng let the silence stretch.

  “We’ve verified that the communication is instantaneous by comparing their responses,” volunteered the moon-faced analyst.

  “At least within the reflex-response limits of human norms,” said the other analyst.

  “Harder! Faster!” shrieked the female Rifter.

  “Unnnnh! Unnnnnnh! Ooooooogh!” bellowed the man.

  “Squeaka-squeaka-squeaka,” went the dyplast dolls.

  “I see,” said Ng. Abrayan fought hard to suppress laughter at the exquisite dryness of her superior’s comment. Who needs thud and blunder when two well-timed words will do?

  The console emitted a sudden blip.

  “There’s another channel coming on line,” Moon Face exclaimed. He tapped at the keypads, and another window popped up. A narrow, pale face stared out, disdain in its dark eyes.

  “Oh, blunge,” said Aziza. “That’s Barrodagh, the Mouth of Eusabian. What’s he doing?”

  The analyst tapped again at the console, expanding the window. Barrodagh sat at a desk on which was a pair of miniature dolls like the full-sized ones now writhing in squeaky passion in the grips of the two distant Rifters.

  “He’s overriding the gasm channels!” Chapped Lips shouted.

  Barrodagh picked up one of the dolls and tweaked it viciously. The man on-screen screamed, flung his doll from him, and clutched his groin. Then Barrodagh picked up the other doll. Ng felt her insides twist at what he did next; the female Rifter shrieked and curled up like a crushed insect.

  Then Barrodagh began to play the two hapless Rifters like Haruban’s pipe organ, whose voicing is the screams of the damned. They tried frantically to reach their consoles and disconnect, but Barrodagh gave them no chance. His rictus of vicious pleasure made Ng’s stomach lurch.

  “He’s gonna play this back to every ship, as a warning not to chatz around on the hyperwave,” said Aziza. “He’s been screaming about that since the attack began—this’ll shut them down for sure.”

  “Stop him,” Ng ordered. “We need that chatter to continue.”

  “We can’t,” Abrayan protested. “The consoles are locked; we’re to observe and report. Incoming only.”

  “We can do it without detection,” Moon Face put in. “We’re sure now that the broadcast nature of the hyperwave makes it impossible to know where a signal is coming from.”

  Ng tapped her boswell, signaling the duty officer.

  (Cuatemoc here.)

  (This is Ng. I need Console 28 unlocked. Emergency Command Override.)

  (I’ll have to clear that with Admiral Nyberg.) She heard the click of disconnection; she’d put her reputation on the line with the override, which would ensure that Nyberg would be interrupted no matter what he was doing or where he was.

  A particularly gruesome scream clenched at her gut. “Cut the sound on that,” she ordered, noting heads turning outside the bay despite the dampers.

  An endless moment passed, then a window swelled on the console, revealing the heavy features of Admiral Nyberg, tight with distaste. She could see a reflection of the same real-time feed from his console in his eyes.

  “What is this?” he snapped.

  She explained the situation tersely. “If we don’t stop him, the en clair hyperwave traffic may diminish dramatically.”

  “Do it.” His image vanished.

  A red light above the keypad on the console turned green. Aziza bent and tapped at the keys. The two analysts crowded in next to her; the three of them muttered back and forth in disconnected sentences that Ng couldn’t follow.

  “I think . . .” said Moon Face.

  “Grab that channel, heterodyne them. . . .” said Chapped Lips.

  “Got it,” Aziza said, and, shoving the two analysts out of the way, seated herself and started tapping at the keypads.

  The screams ceased abruptly. The two Rifters drifted weakly over to their consoles and slapped at them, and their windows vanished, leaving only Barrodagh’s image, which expanded to fill the screen. He looked surprised and disappointed.

  Barrodagh put the dolls down and reached for his console, but the dolls stuck to his hands. A moist sucking noise slurped from the screen, and a look of panic widened his eyes, making his already pasty complexion blanch to the color of old cheese. He shook his hands frantically; the sucking noise got louder and the two dolls flowed up over his hands, up to his wrists.

  The two analysts shouted with laughter. “She’s put their sphincters in reverse!”

  The fierce grin now belonged to Aziza.

  Abrayan made an abortive movement toward the young Rifter, but Ng smiled her way, and motioned with her hand. The lieutenant subsided.

  The rhythmic sucking increased in tempo, now combined with a ripe fruity sound.

  “Sounds like the Thismian Bloat,” Moon Face muttered.

  In horrified fascination, everybody watched the dolls balloon as they sucked in air faster and faster.

  Barrodagh flailed at his console, but the dolls had swollen into great bladders larger than his head and he couldn’t reach the keys. Suddenly, with a deafening pair of reports, the dolls burst, tipping Barrodagh over backward in his chair.

  There was silence. Then, slowly, a hand dripping with iridescent fluid groped its way over the edge of the desk and tapped the console. The screen went dark. Moments later the console locked again—Cuatemoc had been watching.

  An equivalent silence blanketed the bay, then Ng heard a small choked gasp; Abrayan was valiantly trying to control pent-up laughter.

  Ng gave vent to her own chuckle as tacit permission to release their mirth, provoking laughter to the point of tears among everyone else in the bay even more forceful for having been so strictly controlled. Everything of this sort was much funnier when a superior officer was in effect caught in the crossfire.

  Ng smiled for entirely different reasons as she moved out. She knew, as the others would realize when they regained control, that this erosion of Barrodagh’s authority would be seized upon eagerly by his Rifter allies. Even more important was the import of the covert and not-so-covert looks from those at the desks outside the bay. This would spread faster than light through Ares among those under both the Articles of War and the Silence of Fealty.

  Let it, she thought. We’ve little enough to laugh about recently.

  “Carry on,” she said at the threshold.

  Barrodagh. She reviewed what she knew of the Bori at the top of the Catennach hierarchy that executed Eusabian’s commands as she made her way to Nyberg’s office to prepare a further explication if required.

  But Nyberg, a sardonic smile leavening the lines graven on his face by a near-overwhelming burden, already had a feed from the console on his screen. “It seems that our enemies are striking a blow for order.”

  Ng watched as Barrodagh’s face reappeared, a reddish bruise marking the side of his high forehead. Barrodagh had changed to a formal tunic that showed nothing of his recent experiences; behind him the Fist of Dol’jhar’s blazon loomed authoritatively on the wall.

  “A message to all fleet units,” he said. “The initial attack has succeeded. You are to desist from destroying civilian vessels and to confine your efforts to patrol and occupation as specified in General Orders.” He cut the connection.

  “Tidy,” Ng commented. “No threats, no reasons.”

  “That’s actually quite a significant change,” Nyberg said. “Moral Sabotage has tracked the change in the tone of his announcements. He’s more aware than most that the DataNet is already unraveling, and he needs it as badly as we do; analysis shows that only a tiny percentage of his fleet is armed with Urian tech. As for threats, why bother? That tiny fraction knows what he can do if they defy him, and the rest don’t matter.”

  Ng nodded. Unless a mutinous ship decided to risk the Plasma Wager, bringing the spin
reactors up from full shutdown would give Barrodagh more than enough time to send a loyal ship to blast them.

  She shrugged the thought away. “I don’t suppose it matters how tersely he speaks, as long as he keeps speaking.”

  “Exactly.” In her superior’s reply, she heard satisfaction, but, as always, she couldn’t tell whether it was with her or the situation.

  They saluted. Before she turned away she caught the briefest smile from his usually shuttered face. It was barely there, gone in a heartbeat, but she departed feeling better than she had for some time.

  SIX

  Jaim kept his promise, when he next had free time.

  Whatever the Kelly had done, Ivard had not only been cured of the effects of the ribbon, he had improved almost beyond recognition. Although he still bore a green ring around his arm apparently no more dangerous than body art, gone were the pinkish-red eyes, constantly irritated by allergens, gone the sickly pale skin marred by melanin blotches too small to protect him. Gone even was the youthful awkwardness.

  Yet the Kelly kept Ivard in their quarters for a time, and so Jaim went there to give Ivard his first lessons.

  Ivard sprang up with an energy he’d never exhibited before. “Are you ready?” he asked. “I am!”

  Jaim knew something was missing. When he looked around again, he discovered what it was. “Did you lock up Gray and Trev?”

  Ivard shut his eyes, his nose twitching slightly. Then he opened his eyes again. “They’re outside.” He made a vague wave. “Playing with some other dogs. They know their way around.”

  Jaim accepted that; the dogs were really Brandon’s responsibility.

  “Here’s your basic stance,” Jaim said, and settled into it, ready to launch into the explanation of foot placement, trunk, breathing, alignment of arms and head, but Ivard mimicked him with an apparent effortlessness that froze the words in Jaim’s mouth.

  “First move.”

  Within the first ten minutes, the cautious program Jaim had so carefully thought out was abandoned, and he took Ivard through the first-level kinesics.

  At the end, Ivard scarcely seemed winded, and when Jaim returned a couple days after, Ivard proudly demonstrated them all correctly. So Jaim took him through the second-level kinesics.

  Jaim couldn’t get away until after a protracted shift for their third session. By then, Ivard was back at the detention quarters in the Cap. When Jaim arrived he found his shipmates’ quarters empty, and passed through the anteroom into the faux garden. There he found Lucifur, the big white Faustian cliff cat that Vi’ya had rescued on one of their runs years ago, prowling restlessly.

  Ice-blue eyes glowed at Jaim, reflecting the muted lighting that indicated a late hour. The big wedge-shaped head butted Jaim’s thigh, and when he reached to scratch between the battered, notched ears, Luce’s low, ratcheting purr rumbled.

  The cat stilled to alertness, and with a graceful bound, disappeared over a low, ivy-covered wall.

  Jaim turned around as Vi’ya tabbed the door shut. “Ivard’s away, but he will return shortly,” she said.

  Jaim shrugged, relieved. He was tired. “Tomorrow, then.”

  Vi’ya nodded. “As you will.”

  Jaim knew she would not offer any more information unless he asked. “Will he be disappointed if I don’t wait?”

  “I’ve run him through the second-level falls, and some of the easier combinations,” she said. “He has the first-level kinesics and combinations mastered. But the sparring combinations must wait upon you. Healed as he may be, I still do not want to risk damaging him.”

  Jaim hesitated. Since Markham’s death, he’d become accustomed to her one- and two-word answers. When she talked this much, she usually had something on her mind.

  So he followed her into the common room. “Where is he? Oh. Of course—with the Kelly.”

  “Actually I believe he is visiting his nuller friend.”

  Vahn had filled Jaim in on Tate Kaga; when asked what interest the ancient Douloi had in Ivard, the Marine had shrugged. He’s a nuller and a Prophetae, and he’s over six hundred years old. Who can tell what interests him, and why?

  Vi’ya punched up something to drink, filling the room with the sharp tang of caf. After a week of real coffee, the synth drink smelled sharp and unappetizing, but Jaim said nothing.

  Two cups appeared in the dumbwaiter. They retrieved them, and Jaim followed her into the tiny room where she slept. It contained nothing more than a bed, a wall storage cabinet, and a pull-down console desk.

  Without looking to see if he followed or not, she sat down, her fingers moving with assurance over the keys. It was such a familiar sight that he started to back away, thinking that he’d misjudged and he was disturbing the captain at her work, but then he remembered that she was no longer captain.

  She could not be monitoring supplies, or planning a run. Telvarna had been impounded somewhere in a Cap compound, and she had nothing, in fact, to do. He wondered why she even bothered with the console, so heavily filtered it must be—perhaps the challenge of bypassing its limitations appealed to her. But that could only be a game.

  Her profile was somber, its planes and curves clear-cut, her blue-black, glossy hair pulled back in the uncompromising tail Jaim had always seen her wear. In eight years it had only gotten longer, yet she never wore it loose. She could have: she had beautiful hair.

  She is beautiful, but it is irrelevant to her, Reth Silverknife had said once. And it was true. Vi’ya hid the graceful lines of her tall, strong body in a utilitarian flight suit. Before Markham’s death she had delighted in jewel-toned colors, but wore no actual jewels or ornaments, though she liked to look at them; it was only possible to see the generous curve of eyelid and brow, enhanced by the dramatic sweep of dark lashes, when her attention was otherwhere, for when she looked straight at you, you noticed only the density of her pupils in an uncompromising gaze that usually made people uncomfortable.

  You can take the Dol’jharian out of Dol’jhar, but you can’t take Dol’jhar out of the Dol’jharian, Lokri had joked.

  She worked steadily, her eyes on the keypads.

  A terrible conviction gripped him: she was trying to break into the station system, and failing that, she was about to demand that he use his position to aid her.

  He forced his thoughts away, and she didn’t react. He recognized grimly that despite their long association he really didn’t know her. Did anyone? Had anyone? Once. In all the years she and Markham were mates, they had never once touched one another or displayed any kind of affection in front of others. Yet each had spoken for the other with an effortlessness that comes of intimate knowledge—and trust.

  “You’re here!”

  Ivard’s glad cry caught Jaim by surprise, and old habit spun him around, hands stiff. From behind came a snort of amusement from Vi’ya.

  Was that all? She just wanted me to wait for Ivard?

  “I hoped you’d wait,” Ivard said as Jaim joined him in the main room. “I was up at the spin axis in Tate Kaga’s palace. You should see it. Better than any chip! And then I visited the Kelly. We lost track of time, doing the—” He trilled and honked, making noises Jaim would have thought impossible from a human throat. Ivard didn’t seem to notice his change to Kelly-language. “Goes so fast.”

  “Let’s get started,” he said.

  Ivard nodded and followed them out of Vi’ya’s tiny chamber. He stood aside and closed his eyes as he concentrated on his breathing. Vi’ya moved quietly to help Jaim push back the sparse furnishings to the edges of the room. Then she took up a station at the archway into the garden, the angle of her head intent.

  “Let’s see what you learned from Vi’ya. Show me the second-level falls,” Jaim said.

  Ivard obediently dived forward.

  Vi’ya stayed to watch the lesson, though she neither moved nor spoke until Ivard, frustrated with his inability to immediately master a tricky combination, called to her for a demonstration.

 
; Expecting her to refuse, Jaim was surprised when she left her post by the window and took up a stance facing Jaim, a hand’s breadth out of reach, humor narrowing her slanted eyelids above the pure black eyes.

  “Hah!” she breathed, and attacked.

  Jaim’s body reacted before his brain did. After a lightning-fast exchange of light-handed blows, Vi’ya picked Jaim up bodily, with only a soft grunt of effort, and threw him. Jaim twisted, landing in a perfect roll-to-crouch, hands ready.

  “That was great!” Ivard enthused. “Do it again!”

  They did, and Ivard said, “I want to do that!”

  “The air spin is third level. You have a lot of second-level combos ahead. Back to the forearm block-elbow strike, now that you’ve seen it from attack and defend.”

  Ivard obeyed, but then he launched himself into the air, flailing as he attempted to mimic Jaim’s fall. So Jaim shrugged, and demonstrated.

  Ivard barely made it.

  “You’ll need to practice that,” Jaim said, hands on hips. “Dive off that chair and master the roll-to-crouch before you move up to the hip twist.”

  Ivard nodded, swiping back the sweat-dark red hair, and did so, again awkward but successful. He did not seem to notice his own rasping breath, but Jaim motioned for him to sit down.

  “Do a bout,” Ivard said. “Show me. You’d never let us watch you before.” His voice ended on a faintly interrogative note, his gaze on Jaim, not Vi’ya.

  He got to know her as well, within his own perceptive limitations, Jaim thought wryly.

  Then he abandoned thought as Vi’ya reached for him. They feinted and attacked, engaged and retreated. Jaim had always found her proximity disturbing; it was difficult to remember how young she was. When Markham had found her, she was scarcely the age of young Ivard. Tall and thin but never gangling, she’d grown taller over the next year, and she’d already been immensely strong. Memory-images, no more than echoes, flickered through his mind. The scent of sweat mixed with a subtle spice; the sight of the long-fingered hands, their nails closely trimmed; the soft sigh of midnight-black hair against his cheek or his arm when she spun out of his grip.