Quiet Knives

by Sharon Lee

  The turtles had canceled, the tidy kill-fee deposited to ship's funds before the message had hit her in box.

  Just as well, thought Midj Rolanni, wearily. She sagged back into the pilot's chair and reached for the cup nestled in the armrest holder. She'd hadn't really wanted to reconfigure the flight deck for two turtles, anyway.

  The 'toot wasn't exactly prime grade and being cold didn't improve it. She drank it anyway, her eyes on the screen, but seeing through it, into the past, and not much liking what she saw.

  She finished the cold 'toot in a swallow, shuddered and threw the cup at the recycler. It hit the unit's rim, shimmied for a heartbeat, undecided, and fell in, for a wonder. Midj sighed and leaned to the board, saving the turtles' cancellation with a finger-tap, and accessing the stored message queue.

  There wasn't much there besides the turtles' message—the transmittal, listing the cargo she'd paid Teyope to carry for her; the credit letter from the bank, guaranteeing the funds, half on cargo transmittal, half on delivery.

  And the letter from Kore. Pretty thin letter, really, just a couple lines. Not what you'd call reason for off-shipping a perfectly profitable cargo onto a trader just a little gray—"...just a little gray," she repeated the thought under her breath—and Teyope did owe her, which even he acknowledged, damn his black heart, so the cargo was in a fine way to arriving as ordered, where ordered, and not a line of the guarantees found in violation.

  She hoped.

  Her hand moved on its own, fingers tapping the access, though she could have told the whole of Kore's note out from heart. Still, her eyes tracked the sentences, few as they were, as if she'd never read them before.

  Or as if she hoped they'd say something different this time.

  Her bad luck, the words formed the same sentences they had since the first, the sentences making up one spare paragraph, the message of which was—trouble.

  Midj. You said, if I ever changed my mind, you'd come. Cessilee Port, Shaltren, on, Saint Belamie's Day. I'll meet you. Kore.

  "And for this," she said out loud, hearing her voice vibrate against the metal skin of her ship. "For this, you shed cargo and take your ship—your home and your livelihood—onto Juntavas headquarters?"

  It wasn't the first time she'd asked the question since the letter's receipt. Sometimes, she'd whispered it, sometimes shouted. Skeedaddle, now. Her ship didn't tell her nothing, but that she needed to go. She'd promised, hadn't she?

  And so she had—promised. Half her lifetime ago, and the hardest thing she'd done before or since was closing the hatch on him, knowing where he was going. She'd replayed their last conversation until her head ached and her eyes blurred, wondering what she could have said instead, that would have made him understand...

  But he had understood. He'd chosen, eyes open, knowing her, knowing how she felt. He'd said as much, and say what you would about Korelan Zar, he was no liar, nor ever had been.

  "You go, then." The memory of her voice, shaking, filled her ears. "If this Job is so important you gotta take up the Juntavas, too—then go. I ain't gonna stop you. And I ain't gonna know you, either. Walk down that ramp, Korelan, and you're as good as dead to me, you hear?"

  She remembered his face: troubled, but not anything like rethinking the plan. He'd thought it through—he'd told her so, and she believed him. He'd always been the thinker of the two of them.

  "Midj," he said, and she remembered that his voice hadn't been precisely steady, either. "I've got to. I told you—"

  "You told me," she'd interrupted, harsher maybe in memory than in truth. She remembered she'd been crying by then, with her hand against the open hatch, and the ramp run down to blastcrete, a car waiting, its windows opaqued and patient, a few yards beyond.

  "You told me," she'd said again, and she remembered that it had been hard to breathe. "And I told you. I ain't comin' with you. I ain't putting Skeedaddle into Juntavas service. You want to sell yourself, I guess you got the right. But this ship belongs to me."

  His face had closed then, and he nodded, just once, slung his kit over his shoulder and headed down the ramp. Chest on fire, she'd watched him go, heard her own voice, barely above a whisper.

  "Kore..."

  He turned and looked up to where she stood, fists braced against her ship.

  "You change your mind," she said, "you send. I'll come for you."

  He smiled then, so slight she might've missed it, if she hadn't known him so well.

  "Thanks, Midj. I'll remember that."

  In the present, Midj Rolanni, captain-owner of the independent tradeship Skeedaddle, one of a dozen free traders elected as liaison to TerraTrade—respectable and respected—Midj Rolanni drew a hard breath.

  Twenty Standards. And Kore had remembered.

  She set down as pre-arranged in Vashon's Yard and walked over to the office, jump-bag on her shoulder.

  Vashon himself was on the counter, fiddling with the computer, fingers poking at the keys. He looked up and nodded, then put his attention back on the problem at hand. Midj leaned her elbows on the counter and frowned up at the ship board.

  Rebella was in port—no good news, there—and BonniSu, which was better. In fact, she'd actively enjoy seeing Su Bonner, maybe buy her a beer and catch up on the news. Been a couple Standards since they'd been in port together, and Su had bought last time...

  "Sorry, Cap," Vashon said, breaking into this pleasant line of thought. "Emergency order, all good now. What'll it be?"

  All spacers were "Cap" to Vashon, who despite it was one of the best all-around spaceship mechanics in the quadrant—and maybe the next.

  "Ship's Skeedaddle, out of Dundalk," she said, turning from the board. "Got an appointment for a general systems check. Replace what's worn, lube the coils, and bring her up to spec—that's a Sanderson rebuild in there, now, so the spec's're—"

  "Right, right..." He was poking at the keys again, bringing up the records. "Got it all right here, Cap. How're them pod-clamps we fitted working out for you?"

  "Better'n the originals," she said honestly, which was no stretch, the originals having seen a decade of hard use before Skeedaddle ever came to her, never mind what she'd put on 'em.

  "Good," he said absently, frowning down at his screen. "Now, that Sanderson—we have it on-file to tune at ninety percent spec that being efficient enough for trade work, like we talked about. You're still wantin'—"

  "Bring her up to true spec,'' Midj interrupted, which she'd decided already and, dammit, she wasn't going to second-guess herself at this hour. If she was a fool, then she was, and it wouldn't be the first time she'd made the wrong call.

  Not even close.

  Vashon was nodding, making quick notes on his keypad. "Bring her to true-spec, aye, Cap, will do." He looked up.

  "You'll be wanting the upgraded vents, then, Cap? If you're going to be running at spec I advise it."

  She nodded. "Take a look at the mid-ship stabilizer, too, would you? Moving her just now, I thought I noticed a slide."

  "'Cause you come in without cans," he said, making another note. "But, sure, we'll check it—ought to ride stable, cans or no cans." He looked up again.

  "Anything else?"

  "That's all I know about. If you find anything major that needs fixing, I'll be at the Haven."

  "Haven it is," he said, entering that into the file, too. "Cash, card, or ship's credit?"

  "Ship's credit."

  "Right, then." He gave her a crabbed smile. "She ought to be good to go by the end of the week, barring we find anything unexpected. You can check progress on our stats channel, updated every two hours, local. Ship's name is your passcode."

  "Thanks," she said, and shifted the bag into a more comfortable position on her sh
oulder. "I'll see you at the end of the week, barring the unexpected."

  She nodded and he did and she let herself out the door that gave onto the open Port.

  "Going where?'' Su Bonner paused with her beer halfway to her mouth.

  "Shaltren," Midj repeated, trying to sound matter of fact, and not at all reassured by the other woman's decisive headshake.

  "Shaltren's not the place you want to be at this particular point in time, Captain Rolanni, me heart." Su put her beer down on the table with an audible thud. "Trust me on this one, like you never have before."

  "I trust you plenty," Midj said, spinning her own beer 'round the various scars on the plastic tabletop, that being a handy way to not meet her friend's eyes. "You know I do."

  "Then you've given over the idea of going to Shaltren." Su picked up her beer and had a hefty swallow "Good."

  Midj sighed, still navigating the bottle through the tabletop galaxy.

  "So, what's wrong with Shaltren? Besides the usual."

  "The usual being that it's Juntavas Headquarters? That'd be bad enough, by your lights and by mine. Lately, though, there's more. Chairman Trogar, they say, is not well-loved."

  Frowning, Midj glanced up. "Must break his heart."

  "Not exactly, no." Su had another swallow of beer and shook two fingers at the bartender. "What I heard is, he means to keep it that way. Anybody who talks across him or who doesn't rise fast enough when he yells 'lift!'—they're dead right off. He's got himself an aggressive expansion plan in motion and he doesn't mind spending lives—that's anybody's but his own—to get what he wants."

  Midj shrugged. "The Juntavas always grabbed what they could."

  The new beers came, the 'keeper collected Su's empty, looked a question at Midj and was waved away.

  "Not always." Su was taking her last comment as a debating point. "I'm not saying every decent spacer should sign up onto the Juntavas workforce, but I will say they've been getting carefuller in later years. They're still trading in all the stuff nobody ought, but they haven't been as gun-happy as they were back in the day..." She raised a hand, showing palm.

  "Cold comfort to you and yours, I grant. The fact remains, there was a trend toward less of that and more...circumspection—and now what rises to the top of the deck but Grom Trogar, who wants a return to the bad old days—and looks like getting them."

  "Well." Midj finished her beer, set the bottle aside, and cracked the seal on the second.

  "So," Su said into the lengthening silence. "You changed your mind about going to Shaltren, right? At least until somebody resets Mr. Trogar's clock?''

  Midj sighed and met her friend's eyes. "Don't see my business waiting that long, frankly."

  "What business is worth losing your ship, getting killed, or both?" Trust Su to ask the good questions. Midj kept her eyes steady.

  "You remember Korelan Zar," she not-asked, and Su frowned.

  "Tall, thin fella; amber eyes and coffee-color skin," she said slowly. "I remember thinking that skin was so pretty-looking." She fingered her beer. "Your partner, right? He was the one that told you one day he'd take you to Panore for a vacation, right?"

  Midj nodded, said nothing.

  Su's sip was nearly a chug, then she continued into the silence.

  "Right. Always wondered what happened to him. Never got around to asking. Must be—what? Fifteen, eighteen Standards?"

  "Twenty." Her voice sounded tight in her own cars. "What happened to him was he figured he had to sign on with another crew—he had reasons, they seemed good to him, and that's all twenty Standards in the past. Thing is, I told him, if he ever needed to ship out—call, and I'd come get him."

  Su was quiet. Midj had a swig of beer, and another.

  "And where he is, is Shaltren," Su said eventually, after she enjoyed a couple of swigs, herself "Midj—you don't owe him."

  "I owe him—I promised." She closed her eyes, opened them. "He asked me to come."

  ''Shit." More quiet, then—"How soon?"

  St. Belamie's Day had begun as a joke; at need, it had become a code—he'd remembered that, too, and trusted her to do the same. It was a moving target, calculated by finding the square root of the diameter of Skeedaddle, multiplying by the Standard day on which the message was sent and dividing by twelve. Accordingly, she had about twenty Standard Days on Kago before she lifted for Shaltren.

  She'd wanted to time it closer, but there was the ship to be brought up to spec, and she daren't gamble that Vashon would find nothing wrong. Likely he wouldn't, but it wasn't the way to bet, not with Kore waiting for her, with who knew what on his dance card.

  "Couple weeks, local," she said to Su, and the other woman nodded.

  "Let's do this again, before I ship out," she said, and finished off her beer in one long swallow. She thumped the bottle to the table. "For now, gotta lift. Business."

  "I hear that," Midj said, dredging up a grin. "I'm at the Haven for the next while, then back on-ship. Gimme a holler when you know you got time for dinner. I'll stand the cost."

  "Like hell you will," Su said amiably. She got her feet under her and was gone, leaving Midj alone with the rest of her beer and the tab.

  He walked down the ramp easy, not hurrying, a pilot on his way to his ship, that was all. He turned the corner and froze on the edge of the halfway, still out of range of the camera's wide eye and the woman leaning against the wall, gun holstered, waiting.

  Waiting for him, he had no doubt. He knew her—Sambra Reallen—who hadn't been anybody particular, and now ran in Grom Trogar's pack; high up in the pack, though not so high that calling attention to herself might get fatal. If she was here, calmly waiting for him go through the one door he had to go through then he was too late.

  He nodded, once, turned, and went back up the hall, walking no faster than he had going down, and with as little noise.

  Too late, he thought, as he reached street-level. Damn.

  There were two ways to play it from here, given that he'd sworn not to be a damn' fool. The strike for the ship, that might've been foolish, though he'd had reason to hope that the fiction of the Judge's continued residence would cover him. The Judge's absence would still serve as cover, since he was the Judge's courier. But the fact that one of Chairman Trogar's own had been waiting for him—that was bad. He wondered how bad, as he ran his keycard through the coder.

  If they'd been waiting for him at the ship, then they likely knew some things. They probably knew that the Judge and most of the household was gone, scattered, along with all the rest of the judges and staff who had managed to go missing before Grom Trogar thought to look for them. It was unlikely that they knew everything—and they'd figure that, too. Which meant he had a bad time ahead of him.

  Nothing to help it now—If he ran anywhere on Shaltren, they'd catch him, and the inconvenience would only make his examination worse. If he waited for them, and went peaceably—it was going to be bad. Chairman Trogar would see to that.

  If they'd been at the ship, they'd be bere soon, if they weren't already.

  The door to the house slid open.

  He stepped inside, playing the part of a man with nothing to fear. His persona had long been established—a bit stolid, a bit slow, a steady pilot, been with the Judge since his itinerant days.

  He flicked on the lights—public room empty. So far, so good. They'd take their time coming in—Judges and their crews, after all, had a reputation for being a bit chancy to mess with.

  There was a some urgency on him, now. He'd planned for back-up; it was second nature anymore to plan for back-up. At the time it had seemed prudent and, anyway, he'd meant to be gone before it came to that.

  Meant to, he thought now, walking quick through the darkened rooms, heading for the comm room and the pinbeam. Meant to isn't will.

  He'd put a life in danger. Might have put a life in danger. If the first message had gotten through. If she hadn't just read it and laughed.

  I'll come for you, she whispered
from memory, the tears running her face and her eyes steady on his. He moved faster now, surefooted in the dark. She'd come. She'd promised. Unless something radical had happened in her life, altering her entirely from the woman he had known—Midj Rolanni kept her promises.

  He'd had no right to pull her in on this. Especially this. Even as a contingency back-up that was never going to be called into play. No right at all.

  He slapped the wall as he strode into the comm center. The lights came up, showing the room empty—but he was hearing things now Noises on his back path. The sound, maybe, of a door being forced.

  Fingers quick and steady, he called up the 'beam, fed in the ID of the receiver. The noises were closer now—heavy feet, somebody swearing. Somewhere in one of the outer rooms, glass shattered shrilly.

  He typed, heard feet in the room beyond, hit send, cleared the log and spun, hands up and palms showing empty.

  "If you're looking for the High Judge," he said to man holding the gun in the doorway. "He's not home."

  Vashon not finding anything about to blow down in Skeedaddle's innards, and the vent upgrade going more smoothly than the man himself had expected, Midj was back on-board in good order inside of eight local days.

  She stowed her kit and initiated a systems check, easing into the pilot's chair with a sigh of relief . The ship was quiet, the only noises those she knew so well that they didn't register with her anymore, except as a general sense of everything operating as it should. Of all being right in her world, enclosed and constrained as it was.

  When she ran with a 'hand—never with a partner, not after Kore—the noises necessarily generated by another person sharing the space would distract and disorient her at first, but pretty soon became just another voice in the overall song of the ship.

  And whenever circumstances had her on-port for any length of time, she came back to the ship with relief her overriding emotion, only too eager to lower the hatch and shut out the din of voices, machinery and weather.

  Hers. Safe. Comfortable. Familiar. Down to the ancient Vacation on Incomparable Panore holocard Kore'd given her as a yet unfulfilled promise after one particularly hard trade run.