by Sharon Lee
The operator’s touch on the board wakes more screens, subtle instruments. A tap brings a chronometer live in the bottom right of the primary screen. Beams are assigned to sweep nearspace; energy levels are sampled, measured, compared.
The clock displays elapsed time: 293 units.
The operator frowns, uncertain of what units the clock measures. She might have known, once. Two hundred ninety-three—that was a long phase. At the last alarm, it had shown 127 elapsed units; on the occasion before that, 63.
The operator turns back to her scans, hoping.
Hoping that it would prove to be something this time—something worthy of her. Of them.
The last alarm had been triggered by a pod of rock and ice traveling through the entanglement of forces that supported and enclosed them.
A rock pod…nothing for them.
She hadn’t even had time for a cup of tea.
The alarm before the rock pod…had been nothing for them, either, though they hadn’t known that, at first.
They pulled it in, followed repair protocols, therapies, and subroutines…
She’d had more than a cup of tea, at least—whole meals, she’d eaten. She’d listened to music, read a book…but in the end there was nothing they could do, except take the salvage and ride the strange tide away again into that place where time, all unknown, elapsed.
The scans—these scans now—they gave her rock…and mad fluctuations of energy. They gave her ice, and emptiness.
There ought to be something more. Something more, worthy or unworthy. The geometry of the space about them was delicate. The alarm would not sound for nothing.
The scans fluttered and flashed, elucidating a disturbance in the forces of this place. Breath caught, the operator leans forward.
The scans detected, measured; verified mass, direction, symmetry…
The scans announced…
…a ship.
Any ship arriving here was a ship in need.
The operator extended her hand and touched a plate set away from all the toggles, buttons, and tags that attended to her part of their function.
She touched the plate…and woke the Light.
* * * * *
This, thought Jen Sin yos’Phelium Clan Korval, is going to be…tricky.
Oh, the orders from his delm were plain enough: Raise Delium, discreetly. Deliver the packet—there was a packet, and didn’t he just not know what was in it. Discreet, the delivery, too. Of course. Delivery accomplished, he was to—discreetly—raise ship and get himself out of Sinan space, not to say range of their weapons.
Alive, preferably.
That last, that was his orders to himself, he being somewhat more interested in his continued good health and long-term survival than his delm. Package delivered was Korval’s bottom line; the expense of delivery beyond her concern.
In any wise, the whole matter would have been much easier to accomplish, from discreet to alive, if Delium wasn’t under active dispute.
Not that this was the riskiest mission he had undertaken at the Delm’s Word during this late and ongoing season of foolishness with Clan Sinan and their allies. He was, Jen Sin knew, as one knows a fact, and without undue pride, Korval’s best pilot. Jump pilot, of course, with the ring and the leather to prove it.
Of late, he would have rather been Korval’s third or fourth best pilot, though that wouldn’t have prevented him being plucked out from the Scouts, which had been clan and kin to him for more than half his life. No, it would have only meant that he would have served as decoy, to call attention away from Korval’s Best, when there was a packet for delivery.
Well, the usual rules applied here, as elsewhere. If working without backup, always know the way out, always carry an extra weapon, always know the state of your ship—and know that your ship is able and accessible—always be prepared to survive, and always remember that the delm was captain to the passengers. Being Korval’s best pilot, his job was to fly where the passengers needed him to fly, at the direction of the delm.
Jen Sin sighed. Gods knew he was no delm, and thankful for it, too. Delms did math in lives, set in courses that would be flown by pilots not yet born. The delm decided who to spend, and when, for what profit to the clan. And just as well, Jen Sin acknowledged, that he wasn’t clever enough to do those sorts of sums.
His attention was occupied for a bit, then, dodging various busy eyes in orbit, and when he had time to think again, at his ease between two security rings, he found he was thinking of his team.
When he’d first come out from the Scouts, he’d thought of them often: the comrades closer than kin; the six of them together stronger, smarter, faster than any one of them alone.
Well.
There was a time when he could have gone back, delm willing, which she hadn’t been. Could have gone back, no questions asked, no accommodation required. Could have then.
Now, what he had was couldn’t, though would still burned in his belly, even now that it was too late. His team had long ago moved past their grief, taken on someone else, shifted tasks and priorities until they were, again, a team—different from the team it had been.
And no room for Jen Sin yos’Phelium, at all.
* * *
“I would prefer the Starlight Room, if it is available,” he said and passed over the identification for one Pan Rip sig’Alta and a sixth-cantra, too.
The deskman took both, bland-faced, scanned the card and returned it, the coin having been made to disappear.
“Sir, I regret. The Starlight Room is unavailable. May I suggest the Solar Wind?”
“The Solar Wind, excellent,” he murmured, and received the key card the man passed to him.
“The hallway to the right; the second door on your left hand. Please be at peace in our house.”
That was scarcely likely—a certain tendency to unpeacefulness in perilous places being one of his numerous faults. Thus far, however, all was according to script. That, he told himself firmly, was good.
Jen Sin entered the hallway, found the door, and used the key, stepping across the threshold immediately the door slid away, a man with no enemies in need of an hour of solitude.
Two steps inside, the door already closed behind him, he checked—a man startled to find his solitary retreat already occupied.
This was also according to script—that there should be someone before him. Who, he had not been privileged to know. No matter, though—there were yet another few lines of code to exchange, which would in theory assure the orderly transfer of the packet tucked snug in an inner pocket of his jacket…and the safe departure of the courier.
Jen Sin allowed himself to display surprise before he bowed.
“Forgive me,” he said to the severe young woman seated by the pleasant fire, a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table before her. “I had thought the room would be empty.”
“Surely,” said she, “the fault lies with the desk. However, it seems to me fortuitous, for it seems I am in need of a companion other than my thoughts.”
All and everything by the script. He ought to have been reassured. He told himself that.
Meanwhile, acting his assigned part, he inclined his head formally.
“I am pleased to accept the gift of comradeship,” he murmured and stepped toward the table with a Scout’s silent footsteps.
He paused by the doubtless comfortable chair, the back of his neck feeling vulnerable. There remained one more matched exchange, to prove the case. Would the child never speak?
She looked up at him, and smiled wistfully, so it seemed to him.
“Please,” she said, “sit and share wine with me.”
That…
…was not according to script, and now he saw it—the anomaly that his subconscious, ever so much cleverer than he, had noticed the moment he had cleared the threshold.
The wine bottle, there on the table between the two glasses…
…was uncorked.
Jen Sin kicked; the tab
le, the glasses, the wine becoming airborne. He slapped the door open, heard glass shatter behind him, and a high scream of agony.
He did not look back as he stepped into the hall, turning left, away from the foyer where the doorman presided. Deliberately bringing to mind the floor plan he had memorized to while away the hours alone in transit to Delium, he ran.
Less than a half-minute later, he let himself out a service door, wincing as the alarm gave tongue. Then, he was again running at the top of his speed, down the delivery corridor to the street beyond.
* * *
He had not surrendered the packet, his ship, or his life, though he had pretended to give up the two latter.
The man hidden on the gantry, justifiably proud of the shot that had dropped him at the ship’s very hatch, had taken the key from Jen Sin’s broken fingers, turned, and slapped it home.
Obediently, the hatch rose. Jen Sin, slightly less dead than he had appeared, lurched to his feet and broke the man’s neck. The long rifle clattered to the landing pad, where he doubted it disturbed the gunman’s three associates. The body he left where it fell, as he staggered into the lock and brought the hatch down.
He crawled down the short hallway, dragged himself painfully into the pilot’s chair…gripped the edge of the board until his vision cleared. It hurt to breathe. Cunning thrust of the knife, there—he ought to remember it.
Time to go. He extended a hand, brought the board clumsily to life, his hands afire, no spare breath to curse or to cry. The ’doc, that was his urgent need. He did know that.
Not yet, though. Not just yet.
He sounded a thirty-second warning, all that he dared, then gave Lantis her office, sagging in the chair, not webbed in, and in just a while, a little while, only a while, a while…He shook his head, saw stars and lightning.
As soon as they gained Jump, it would be safe enough then to tend his hurts.
An alarm screamed. He roused, saw the missile pursuing, initiated evasive action and clung to the board, to consciousness, in case his ship should need him.
So much for discretion. That was his thought as Lantis bounced through lanes of orderly traffic, Control cursing him for a clanless outlaw, and not one word of sorrow for those firing surface-to-air into those same working lanes of traffic.
Korval either would or would not be pleased, though he had the packet. He kept reminding himself of that fact—he had the packet. The woman at the meeting room spoke the lines out of order, no sense to it. If she were false, why not just finish the script and take what was not hers? If she were an ally, and captured—then, ah, yes, then one might well vary, as a warn-away—
She had not survived, he was certain of that, and to his list of error was added that he had cost Korval an ally…and added another death to his account. He might almost say “innocent” save there were no innocents in this. He might, surely, say “dutiful,” and even “courageous” might find a place in his report…and Korval—he—was in her debt.
His ship spoke to him. Orbit achieved. At least, he could still fly. He set himself to do so, heading for the up and out, the nearest Jump point, or failing that, the nearest likely bit of empty space from which he might initiate a short Jump.
His side where the knife had gotten past the leather, that was bad; his fingers left red smears on the board. The ’doc…but Lantis needed him.
They had almost reached the Jump point when a ship flashed into being so close the proximity alarms went off. Jen Sin swore weakly at pinheaded piloting, and a moment later discovered that not to be the case at all.
The new ship fired; the beam struck directly over the engines.
The shields deflected it, and there came evasive action from the automatics, but the other ship was a gunboat, no slim and underarmed courier.
The Jump point was that close. Once in Jump space, he would have some relief…enough relief that he might live through this adventure.
There really was no other choice; he had no more time on account.
Blood dripped from fingers remarkably steady as they moved across the board, diverting everything but the minimum amount necessary to function—from life support, from auxiliary power…
From the shields.
He fed everything to the engines and ran for the Jump point, as if there were no gunboats within the sector, much less the ship that even now was launching enough missiles to cripple a warship.
They hit the point with too much velocity, too much spin; in the midst of an evade that had no chance of succeeding. He greatly feared that they brought the missile with them.
Jen Sin groped for and hit the emergency autocoords, felt the ship shiver, saw the screens go grey—
And fainted where he sat.
* * * * *
The Light pulled and riffled the files from the ship. The operator kept one eye on its screen while she pursued her own sort of data.
Engine power was minimal, and life support also; the shields were in tatters. The dorsal side showed a long, deep score, like that delivered from an energy cannon. That the hull had not taken worse damage—that was something to wonder at. Still, her readings indicated life support and other services low past the point of danger.
It was, the operator acknowledged, a ship in dire trouble, yet it held air, it held together, and it had come under its own power into the space at Tinsori Light. All those things recommended it, and the operator felt a cautious thrill of anticipation.
If the ship were fit to be repaired—but that was for the Light to decide.
If the pilot lived, her duty fell there.
The operator shivered, in mingled anticipation and fear.
* * * * *
They’d taken bad hits, him and his ship, and unless they raised a repair yard or a friendly station soon, there was no saying that they’d either one survive.
He’d come to in Jump with emergency bells going off and a blood-smeared board lit yellow and red. It took determination, and a couple of rest periods with his forehead pressed against the board while pain shuddered through him, and his sluggish heartbeat filled his ears—but he pulled the damage reports.
Whatever had hit them as they entered Jump had been—should have been—enough to finish them. The main engine was out; the hull was scored, and there was a slow leak somewhere; life support was ranging critical and running off impulse power, along with the lights and screens.
In short, he was a pilot in distress with a limited number of choices available to him.
One: he could manually end Jump and hope Lantis held together, that they would manifest in a friendlier portion of space than the port they had just quit and within hailing distance of, if not an ally, at least a neutral party.
Two: he could ride Jump out to its natural conclusion. Normal reentry would be kinder to his ship’s injuries. His own injuries…
He looked down at his sticky hands, the Jump pilot’s ring covered with gore, and allowed himself to form the thought…
I am not going to survive this.
Oh, he could—probably—crawl across the cabin and get himself into the autodoc. But under emergency power, the ’doc would only stabilize him and place him into a kindly sleep until such time as ship conditions improved.
He may have blacked out again just there. Certainly it was possible. What roused him was…was.
Ah.
Lantis had exited Jump. They were…someplace.
Gasping, he leaned toward the board, squinting at screens grown nearly too dark to see.
The coords meant nothing to him. He remembered—he remembered hitting the autocoords. But the autocoords were for Korval safe spots—the ship yard; the Rock; quiet places located in odd corners of space, such as might be discovered by Scouts and pilots mad for knowing what was there? Autocoords had taken stock of Lantis as injured and hurt as she was, and, measured through some prior delm’s and pilot’s priorities, cast them together through limitless space to one particularly appropriate destination, to one last hope.
The space outside his screens was a place of pink and blue dusts pirouetting against a void in which stars were a distant promise.
If there was a friend of Korval in this place, it would, he thought, be good if they arrived…soon.
As if his thought had called the action, an interior screen came to life. Someone was accessing the ship’s public files.
Hope bloomed, so painful and sudden that he realized he had, indeed, given up himself and his ship. There was someone out there—perhaps a friend. Someone who cared enough that it did them the honor of wanting to know who they were.
Jen Sin reached to the board, teeth gritted against the pain, and did pilot’s duty, waking the scans and the screens, directing the comp to pull what files might be on offer at the address helpfully provided by their interrogator.
He found the visual as the files scrolled onto the screen—stared at both in disbelief, wondering if everything, from his waking at Jump end to this moment, were nothing other than the final mad dreams of a dying mind.
A station rose out of the dust, like no station he had ever seen, all crags, sharp edges, and cliffs. There were no visible docking bays, nor any outrigger yards. From the center of the uncompromising angularity of it rose a tower; white light pulsed from its apex in a rhythm of six-three-two.
On the screen, the information: Welcome to Tinsori Light, Repairs and Lodging.
He touched the query button, but no further information was forthcoming.
An alert trilled and Jen Sin blinked at the stats screen even as he felt the beam lock around Lantis.
For good or for ill, friend or foe, Tinsori Light was towing them in.
* * * * *
The pilot had queried the Light.
The pilot was alive.
The operator rose, hands automatically smoothing her robe. Once, she thought, she must have had a robe that wrinkled, showed wear, became stained. This garment she wore now, here, in this role—this robe was never mussed or rumpled. Always, it was fresh, no matter how long she wore it or how much time had elapsed.