by Sharon Lee
“I believe that it is now my turn,” Val Con said. “As my lifemate has assured me that this will be fun, I have the pleasant duty of informing Captain Waitley, my sister, that her room has been made ready for her, and that the House rejoices at her return. A suite has been prepared to receive your crew. May I know how many crew? I only wish to be certain that our arrangements do not fall short.”
She’d talked this over with Kara—rather, Kara had talked it over with her.
“Theo, your brother has asked you to come home,” she’d said. “He has been remarkably patient and has not invoked your delm—” No matter how many times she was told otherwise, Kara persisted in believing that Val Con was Theo’s delm—
“He will expect that you will stay, at least until some—less perilous route can be devised. He will also offer lodging to your crew—which is a gentle courtesy and ought not to be refused.” She had looked wry for a moment, before adding, “Especially as you will be dropping quite a number of problems into his lap!”
“Four crew,” Theo said now. “The pathfinders. Grakow. And Hevelin.”
“Ah, yes, the ambassador. Will he wish his own quarters?”
He was, she suspected, having fun with her—well, wasn’t that what Miri’d said?
Theo met his eyes and asked Bechimo to have the crew get ready to debark.
“Thank you. The ambassador will bunk with me.”
“Excellent. The Southern Suite has six rooms around a common parlor, and a small galley. Your crew will have ample space to relax.”
“Actually,” Theo said, belatedly realizing her error, “Comm Officer Joyita will remain with the ship.”
“There is no need,” Val Con said. “You are quite secure here.”
Theo shook her head.
“Comm Officer Joyita will remain with the ship,” she repeated.
Val Con studied her face closely, his eyes brilliantly green.
“I see,” he said at last, and glanced to Miri. “Cha’trez, I believe Captain Waitley would welcome a cup of tea.”
“Could use a cup myself,” Miri agreed, and reached out to take Theo’s hand.
“Car’s right over here, Captain. Your pathfinders’ll be fine with Nelirikk and Diglon.”
“Well, but—my crew…”
“Tommy Lee is on his way,” Jeeves said, from everywhere and nowhere. “He will escort your crew to the morning parlor, Captain. A buffet has been laid.”
She felt Bechimo relaying that to Clarence and had a brief glimpse of his unperturbed face and easy nod.
All proper and reasonable, then.
“Thank you,” she said and allowed herself to be taken from the field, Miri’s hand warm around hers. “Tea would be welcome.”
They all three sat in the front, though that meant Theo was kind of crowding Miri. Val Con put the car into gear and made a wide turn. Now that the light was behind them, Theo could see the shadow of the Tree on the ground, and the house just a short distance ahead, windows glittering like jewels.
Val Con apparently didn’t have anything to say, nor did Miri. Theo tried not to worry about exactly how Nelirikk would be “sorting out” Stost and Chernak, when they apparently hadn’t been included in the room count…
“Ah,” Val Con said, guiding the car into a spot by a lighted door.
“I am remiss, Sister. In all the excitement of your landing I had forgotten that I have news for you.”
Theo winced, thinking of the likeliest things he’d heard. Still…
“Really?” she said. “What kind?”
“The most joyous news is always of kin,” he answered, over the snap of the car doors opening. “Your mother is on Surebleak and requests that you call upon her at your earliest convenience.”
* * * * *
“Which of us here is senior in service?” Chernak asked, in Trade. It was a reasonable question, between soldiers, and appropriately asked. Absent a specialist, or a pathfinder, the leadership position in any meeting of Troop went to the soldier with the highest rank and service time. In the case of a meeting of pathfinders or specialists, the leadership rule held.
She did not discount the fourth of their number, who looked to be an experienced soldier of the Troop. Not even a pathfinder discounted the abilities of a line soldier. Most of her concern in this instance, though, was Nelirikk Explorer, house security and personal aide to a captain who was twice a Hero.
The captain Nelirikk served—they had seen her on screen while they waited in the galley for Captain Waitley’s word, Joyita obligingly providing zoom. She was small, the captain, which Chernak also knew better than to discount, having lately been reminded of what small might accomplish.
So, all respect to the captain and her aide, and to the honest soldier—all respect, though it would suit her well, if she were found to be elder among the three pathfinders present.
“In terms of service,” Stost said, “I am equal to Chernak, who has served more than ten thousand days with honor. I am junior to her in order of birth.”
Nelirikk looked at each of them in turn, face and stance relaxed, very much a soldier who was comfortable in his duty.
“Ten thousand days is service, indeed. Service in such conditions as you have faced must be counted three times. I cannot hope to match such valor.”
That was well said, thought Chernak, and wondered for a moment if she had won the engagement as easily as that.
“However,” Nelirikk continued, “in this place, in this campaign, and in service to Hero Captain Miri Robertson—I am elder. It cannot be otherwise, Pathfinders, as you must agree.”
Chernak did not sigh. She hadn’t really expected to prevail.
“Jeeves,” Nelirikk said, apparently speaking to the air around them, “will you make the practice room available to us?” He paused and again studied them, one, then the other.
“Unless the Pathfinders wish to contest for rank?”
Chernak raised her hands, showing them empty.
“We agree that you are elder here. Despite our service, we are new on this field. Our commanders have been lost. Our Troop has been lost. Even the Enemy has been lost, if the histories Captain Waitley provided are accurate. We are under orders, and we would complete our mission. That is our purpose now. Captain Waitley brings us here, to her brother and to your captain, because you have given oath, and serve a civilian authority, as soldiers were made to do.”
There was a pause, as if Nelirikk had heard that which startled him.
“We have much to talk about,” he said after a moment. “Jeeves?”
“The practice room awaits you,” the disembodied voice spoke again, as it had in answer to Captain Waitley’s brother. It was, Chernak supposed, another such Work as Joyita—a not-Great Work, as he himself insisted, and yet like that which the Enemy had created to subvert and destroy.
“Thank you,” Nelirikk said. “Pathfinders, follow me. Rifle, take rear guard.”
“Yes,” said the soldier, who bore no rifle that Chernak could see.
Nelirikk strode off; they followed, walking side by side in consideration of the rear guard.
Their way continued to be lighted, here and there interrupted by shadows. Stost abruptly halted inside one such, much larger than the rest, and stood perfectly still, craning his head back.
Chernak looked up, sighting along his—
Above them loomed a mighty tree, its proud branches stretching up until it seemed the stars must scrape through the boughs on their march across the night.
This, too, they had seen on screen, as Bechimo came in to this rough docking. They had known it was large. But from the ground, and they in its shadow—it was vast.
“Captain Waitley,” said Stost, “should remove the small tree from her ship soon, Elder.”
“That Tree…” Nelirikk’s voice drew their attention from the heights.
“Korval’s Tree is many hundreds of Standards old. It is the very Tree that Jela brought off of a world that successfully de
fended itself against the Enemy.”
Jela was given weight, as if Nelirikk spoke of a mentor or an elder who had taught him much. Chernak put that question aside for the moment. A being, any being, that had held against the Enemy…that being—that service—required acknowledgment.
Stost saluted first, bringing his heels smartly together.
Chernak saluted, and surprisingly, the soldier called Rifle also saluted, his face tilted upward. Lastly, Nelirikk came to attention, fist striking shoulder.
“Arak, Yxtrang,” Stost said, voice raised so that it might be heard by the very highest of branches. It was the soldier’s form, and if Stost named this old and courageous being a soldier, well—was it not?
“Arak ek zenorth,” Chernak said, finishing the phrase.
Honor, Soldier. Honor and glory.
“All honor,” said Rifle, speaking Trade, not Troop.
“Glorious its deeds,” Nelirikk added, also in Trade.
They stood so for six breaths by unspoken accord before, one by one, they let their salutes go.
“Come,” said Nelirikk. “The practice room awaits.”
* * * * *
They had gained the house and the morning parlor before Theo decided that Val Con was serious.
“What’s Kamele doing on Surebleak?” she demanded, as Val Con placed his coat and Miri’s on the window seat.
He turned and met her eyes, his expression serious—which could mean that he actually was serious…or that he was pulling her leg.
“She came to liberate Father,” he said.
“Liberate Father?” Theo stared at him, speechless in the face of twin impossibilities. Kamele…a scholar of Delgado, researcher and teacher, who had lived all her life on a Safe World…Kamele traveling by herself to Surebleak to—to—no! It was ridiculous.
Equally ridiculous was the notion that Father could possibly require a rescue—from anyone, really—but surely, least of all from Kamele.
Val Con had moved over to the buffet while she struggled with this and was handing Miri a cup. Theo stepped to his side.
“Did she?” she asked. “Liberate Father.”
“Well, she might have done,” her brother answered, like he was just now considering that possibility, “only he was not to home. Allow me to draw you a cup of tea, Sister.”
Theo opened her mouth—then closed it.
Val Con handed her a cup, which she took automatically.
“Thank you.”
“You are quite welcome,” he answered, turning back to fill his own cup.
“Is he to home now?” she asked, when he had finished with the urn and had turned again to face her.
“Alas, he is still unavailable.”
He raised his cup and sipped.
Theo did the same, taking a moment to savor the blend.
“Is Kamele staying here—in this house?”
“Ah, no. She is lending her expertise to a project which has been undertaken by our Aunt Kareen. They have together taken a house in the city in order to be close to their sources, and—”
“Wait.” Theo raised a hand. Val Con obligingly paused and had another sip of tea, watching her over the rim of his cup.
“Kamele is working with—with Father’s sister? Sharing a house?”
“Indeed. They get along delightfully. Our aunt has said to me that your mother’s insights and research skills have been of inestimable value.”
“I—How did she get here? Kamele, I mean. Surebleak’s not exactly on the cruise ship lines.”
“You must give us a moment,” Val Con said reprovingly. “There is a process upon which we are well embarked. Another six years and I daresay we will have all the cruise ships one could wish for.
“To your point, however—you must be certain to ask your mother how she came to Surebleak. I found the tale…enlightening.”
He paused, head half turned toward the door. In the sudden silence, Theo could hear voices in the hallway.
“Sounds like your crew’s coming in,” Miri said. She slid her arm through Val Con’s and the two of them stepped toward the window, clearing the way from the door to the buffet.
“The board is yours, Captain,” Val Con murmured.
* * * * *
“My captain will wish to know your mission,” Nelirikk said. “Whether you offer her your knives or not.”
They sat around a table in a large room otherwise lacking furniture, though there were exercise machines of the kind familiar to them from their time aboard Bechimo, and also an empty area ample enough to practice hand-to-hand, with one comrade or more.
The table held several large pitchers of water, and also plates of cheeses and breads. The Hero captain, then, did not mean to starve answers out of them.
At least, not yet.
Stost smiled to himself. It had been a strange campaign since they strapped into crew seats aboard a ship none had expected to survive the blockade they sought to break.
In fact, most of those aboard had not survived. They two had, along with Grakow and, more briefly, the senior crew who brought them aboard, only because they had been deep in the belly of the ship in the engineering halls. They had escaped that doom and been picked up as survivors by Bechimo, Captain Waitley commanding.
Multiply lucky, he and Chernak. Some would say so. He might say so himself, having survived the mission that had killed all the others of their team, the riots on the docksides, the destruction of the ship they were aboard and, so it would appear, time itself.
Yes. They were lucky.
And here they stood, in a brave new universe, in which there was so much to learn, so much to explore.
The only thing which held them to the old universe, the old war…were their orders.
Stost sighed. Troop—even pathfinders—were simple at core. Resist the enemy; protect civilians; obey command; carry out orders.
The need to carry out the orders, to finish the mission, had been a constant rubbing at the back of his mind since Captain Waitley had plucked them from the wreckage of Orbital Aid 370. He and Chernak had been poised to assault a Great Work—which battle they could not have won—so that they might see the mission completed and themselves freed from duty.
What would happen, he wondered, as he listened to Chernak and Nelirikk talk in circles about what they would and would not reveal of their last mission…What would happen, if they put the cases down and, as the senior ranking officers present, declared the mission complete?
It was not the first time he had thought along this path since their survival…since their probable…continued survival. He had not spoken to Chernak about it; not as such. He had dreamed it, somewhat, with Hevelin, whose advice and insights he had come to value.
But to lay such a thing before Chernak…
Chernak was senior. Chernak was conservative. Chernak would obey the orders, though it tied her to a lifetime of fruitless searching.
He…was junior. All his life he had followed his elder, protected her from folly and from death. She had led him well, protected him from folly and from death. It was duty—and something more.
They had been born within scant minutes of each other; they had never, except for brief periods of training and testing, been apart.
Brought from the creche early, they had served ten thousand days together, most of it in combat zones. They were not Ms; they had no obsolescence protocol woven into their DNA. They were X strain, and though most died in battle long before they had known the joy of serving ten thousand days, the literature suggested that—were they not in active combat conditions—they might live fifty or sixty more of these Standard Years.
The literature had not revealed, he admitted to himself, what might occur should they have no orders to fulfill. That was worrisome—but not as worrisome as the prospect of fifty years a-roving, looking for that which, as history strongly suggested, did not exist.
They had earned rest, thought Stost. They had earned…peace.
Though they vani
shed like frost under a breath, for lack of anything to hold them, still, it was time.
“The details of what we carry are not for your captain to know, all honor to her, unless she is, or serves, the ranking civilian authority of this universe.”
It was not the first time Chernak had said this.
“There is no single civilian authority in this universe,” Nelirikk said, which was perfectly true, as they knew for themselves. It was not the first time he had said that, either.
“Captain Waitley brought you here, to Clan Korval, because Clan Korval holds the oath of three Yxtrang who have left the Troop. Lacking a single civilian authority, it would seem that your orders send you toward the Troop, as we move away. But I will tell you—now that your orbit has intersected theirs, neither my captain nor the Scout will allow you to proceed until they are made aware of the details of your mission, and have looked upon the contents of those cases.”
Chernak sighed and reached for her water glass. It was an impasse, Stost thought, and surely Chernak knew it, too. Beset and growing angry, Chernak might choose to understand that Captain Waitley had brought them into a trap.
But, thought Stost, Captain Waitley had not brought them into a trap.
Captain Waitley had delivered them to an opportunity.
“The contents of the cases are to be given to an appropriate—” Chernak began again.
Stost leaned forward and put two fingers on her wrist. She paused, looking at those fingers for a long moment. It was a sign between them. It meant I will take point now. It meant, also, Back me.
Chernak met his eyes and closed her right in a quick wink, surrendering the lead to him.
Stost leaned forward and looked into Nelirikk’s serious brown face. A good man, he thought; a man who served with his whole heart. A man who was fortunate in his captain.
“We will detail our mission, and show the contents of our cases to your captain and her second,” he said calmly. “Also, we solicit her aid.”
Beside him, he heard Chernak draw a long, shuddering breath.
* * * * *
They were an orderly mob, Miri thought, leaning companionably against Val Con’s shoulder and sipping the tea he’d drawn for her. Nice tea, it was. What was called Evening Tea, meant to relax a body and ease it toward a full night’s slumber.