Pay the Piper: Hathe Book Two

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Pay the Piper: Hathe Book Two Page 24

by Mary Brock Jones


  “That should hold them for a spell.”

  “A few minutes maybe,” retorted Marthe. “They are bound to be carrying shield neutralizers.”

  “With the kind of fire power out there, I would say it’s a foregone conclusion; but we need only another half hour. A few minutes may make all the difference. What about the shuttle? No sign yet?”

  “It’s not like you to expect fate to suddenly deal us a wining hand.”

  “At this particular moment, a miracle wouldn’t go amiss,” Hamon said dryly, concentrating his defenses on the already thinning zones of the shield. If only his father didn’t know him so well!

  Then there was no time for idle musings. Terrans and Hathians attacked the shield on all sides. Marthe took over surveillance, while he threw all their reserve power into its defense. Gradually, the great house was shut down, diverting everything available to bolster the shimmering wall. Finally, there was nothing left.

  “That’s it,” he announced. “Everything is dead but this room and the flyer hangar above us. Once that shield is down, they have a clear passage to this door. Are Riardan and Freya ready to go?”

  “All set. The shuttle will be here in ten minutes.”

  “Time to abandon this room then. You three go ahead and I’ll switch over to you once you’re on board.”

  Quickly Marthe stood up, moving over to pick up Riardan. He wriggled awkwardly, sounding his annoyance at being interrupted in his game.

  “Hush, baby,” soothed Marthe. “How would you like to come and show Freya the flyer?” He stopped instantly. There was nothing Riardan liked better than to be taken out in a flyer, exulting when his father let loose with some of his boyhood aerobatics. Eagerly, his little fingers reached out to the baby. “No, not yet. Freya will only get bored if you wake her too early. Wait till we’ve taken off.”

  She scooped up the baby, eliciting only a grunt from the sleeping child before Freya settled in to her shoulder, and entered the lift doors. Marthe refused to look back at Hamon. It was stupid, but to do so might ill-wish him, might make something happen to prevent his joining her. Instead, she busied herself with settling the children into the flyer, placing Freya in her restraining sleeper first, then buckling an excited Riardan into his seat and giving him the food chute to choose his own snack, a special treat that set his eyes sparkling. So far, thank the Pillars, the fear she was throttling in so tightly had not reached him. The children secured, she was free to take her seat and activate the flyer’s screen, intensely relieved to see Hamon’s face flash up in front of her.

  “All set this end. Now, get up here quickly. Please.”

  Hamon grinned in affirmation. ““Closing down now and switching over to you.”

  A screen lit up, charged with the angry nightmare of the battle. The shield was nearly gone and she refused to look at the total readout of troops arrayed against them. Especially not at the Hathian forces.

  “Some day I really must get Hamon to tell me exactly what he got up to on Hathe during the occupation,” she muttered, then turned at the sound of the door opening.

  He was there. His broad shoulders, his dark hair shining, the harsh mouth grinning back at her as his eyes, alive with the light of battle, softened for an instant at the sight of her.

  “I had forgotten,” she murmured.

  “What?” he asked in surprise as he settled into the seat beside her, activating his own share of the console.

  “How big you are.”

  One hand came across to gently squeeze hers. “I have you safe. Or I will shortly. Time we got out of here. Watch out for the shuttle signal.”

  She waited tensely, then crowed, “Got it!”

  Suddenly, she was silenced.

  “Well? Where?”

  She didn’t answer, pointing instead to her screen. It was displaying the view immediately above them—that precariously guarded, aerial corridor leading to the point in the sky where the shuttle should have been. The one taking them to their own ship, and safety; but it was no shuttle that blocked the airways above.

  Hamon looked across at her. She spoke, said words, but knew her voice was dead with failure. “It’s a Hathian battle cruiser, of the latest mode. We commissioned a fleet of them from Arcanthias in case our first plan to throw you out failed. We have absolutely nothing here that can defeat it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “We’ll have to make a run for it.” There was a starkly clinical lack of emotion in Hamon’s voice.

  Marthe couldn’t make herself equal it. “They will have infrared tracers. Our body heat will show up as soon as we leave the shielding of these rooms.”

  “There’ll be so much confusion when they break through that field that there’s a good chance they’ll miss us.”

  “Not the children. No soldier is that small.”

  “We’ll carry them. Hopefully, the trace will show two bodies, not four. What else do you propose? Sit here and wait for whatever that ship up there decides to dish out?”

  She shook her head, mute, then looked to her babies in anguish. She rose slowly to her feet. Hamon stood too, holding her briefly to give her the strength she needed. There was no other choice; at heart she knew it as well as he. She stepped back as he released her, straightening with resolution.

  “Come on, my darlings, let’s take a wee hike,” she said, as she went to pick up Freya and reached for Riardan. Hamon took his son from her then turned to switch off the screens as they left.

  “Wait a second. Look at this!”

  Marthe looked back and followed his pointing finger.

  “A few minutes ago, they were almost through in near on twenty sites. Now the shield is back to full strength. For some reason, our friends out there have pulled back.”

  “So? If I were a Terran facing a Hathian battle cruiser, I’d pull back too.”

  “Look again. Here, here and here. It wasn’t Terrans attacking those points.”

  A subspace call sign suddenly rent the tense air. Marthe jumped, then looked at Hamon.

  “Answer it.”

  Marthe’s finger reached out to accept, fear stiffening her innards. Not for herself. If Terrans were wary of a Hathian battle cruiser, then it was likely that whoever was up there would not harm the children or herself.

  Hamon was a different matter. He had just given her permission to risk his life. Her eyes locked with his as she waited for an answering voice.

  “Marthe. Is that you?” it said.

  Marthe had twisted her face away at the first word. It was too late. She knew he’d seen the relief she couldn’t hide. He must also have seen her total lack of surprise.

  “Father, it is very good to hear you,” she said.

  “You seem to be in some bother there. What can we do to help?”

  “You’ve already done it. Our friends are retreating.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Sylvan’s voice returned. “Only pulled back, my dear, and we can’t bluff them for long. This ship may look dangerous but the Cantorese will not allow a full scale war on their territory. We have only time to pick you up then must leave. I’ll send down a shuttle.”

  Hamon who broke in to answer. “No. Our own shuttle should be arriving shortly. It will take us to the ship waiting for us at the spaceport. Once we are safe in space, then we can talk.”

  His voice was flat and lifeless. Marthe had heard it like that before, directing his troops on Hathe. They were the last words he was to utter on all the long journey following: the nerve-racking ascent through the shielded corridor to the Cantorese shuttle, the trip through the stratosphere and then up to the space port where their own ship waited. Marthe answered any queries, gave any orders. Even once on board the comparative safety of their own ship, he refused to speak to her, merely indicating that she strap the family in while he took the pilot’s seat.

  Then, finally, he turned to her.

  “Call your people. Tell them to follow us. I know a safe rendezvous.”

 
She didn’t argue, seeing her betrayal in his eyes. Soon, they were at his chosen site—just out of Cantorese space yet close enough that their observer satellites could act as witness in case of foul play.

  “Ask your father to join us—alone,” her husband commanded, and soon a small shuttle was in the docking bay. Sensors confirmed there was only one passenger.

  Hamon took the intercom. “Welcome, Doctor an Castre. Please join us on the bridge.” Then he sat back, and looked at her.

  Now was the time to explain, but she had no idea what to say. Had she betrayed him? She didn’t know.

  The door slid away. It was her father. For a moment, Hamon could be ignored as her father tightly enfolded her and then was shown, to his astonished joy, his two grandchildren: a Riardan grown beyond belief in the year and more since his grandfather last held him and the new delight of baby Freya. But at last the Doctor must turn to greet his son-in-law.

  Marthe turned, too, to face the blank mask of her husband.

  Hamon had been watching her, and before she could turn enough to see his face fully he made sure the angry pain that had engulfed him as he looked at his family was utterly erased. As he looked his last at all that was most precious to him.

  “You will be wondering why I’m here,” said Doctor an Castre.

  “Not at all. I presume your daughter asked you to come. The question is, what do you intend to do now you’re here.”

  Her father chose to ignore his cold politeness and helped himself to a nearby seat. “That rather depends on you, as it happens.”

  “You can relax. It has been brought home rather forcefully to me that my children and my wife can be safe only in a place that is without me.”

  “No!” came Marthe’s horrified denial, but they both ignored her.

  “I would like time to farewell the children, then some hours’ grace for my getaway before any hotheads on your ship decide to take matters into their own hands. The children don’t deserve to live with the knowledge that their grandfather had a part in the death of their father. They will have quite enough of a burden as it is. As soon as I’m able, I will re-organize my finances to ensure that they will never be in physical need.”

  The words were precisely articulated, as tensely constructed as the body he was holding so rigid.

  Marthe could bear it no longer. “My love, no. I only asked my father for help, not to come and fetch me home.”

  His eyes were so deep green as to be almost black. She saw his hand grip the edge of the seat, but nothing else of his body escaped his control.

  “So you say. Even if it’s true, are you sure that at heart you didn’t want this? To leave behind all this sordid outlawry?” he challenged softly. The quiet voice was infinitely more fearsome than if he had loosed his anger in ranting fury.

  “Actually, you’re mistaken, Major,” interrupted her father. I haven’t come to take Marthe back to Hathe, nor did she ask me to. What I have come for is to offer you a proposition—from the Alliance as it happens—which I hope will be an answer to your present dilemma.”

  That was so unexpected that, for an instant, even her father must see the confusion break through. “A proposition from the Alliance? That’s absurd. They have all my service records and the Hathian judicial ones. They know exactly what I did there. “

  “Yes, right down to every single, Hathian death due to your actions, and to every life saved as a result of an order of yours,” returned Sylvan.

  Hamon shook his head slowly. “You’ve lost me.”

  “When you shortened the service period in the mines, the death rate declined dramatically.”

  “That was only to make more efficient use of our resources. You don’t survive by killing off your work force.”

  “You rarely tortured prisoners, unlike other officers. Most importantly of all, you granted the Hathian people the dignity of our humanity. You believed us to be capable of mounting a resistance to your rule, though other Terrans thought of the natives as little more than lower animals on two legs. All because, alone among the senior officers, you never lost sight of the fact that you were on Hathe to aid Earth, not to indulge yourself in the petty power and luxury of the life of a conqueror.”

  “A cesspit is still a cesspit, even if you give it a shiny cover. And your words don’t change the reality of my position on Hathe. I may have ‘accepted the humanity of the Hathian natives’, but you can’t deny that I fought hard to ensure you would have no freedom to enjoy it. There is a whole raft of Alliance laws under which I could be indicted, if it weren’t likely to raise political hell on Earth. What could the Alliance offer me?” he finished caustically.

  “The leadership of the colonizing mission to Annan IV,” said Sylvan an Castre.

  Marthe gaped. Hamon laughed, and continued to laugh, falling back into his chair and clutching his temples. Doctor an Castre stared in bemusement, then shook his head and continued to speak as if there had been no interruption.

  “The leadership to Major Radcliff and to you, Marthe, as Chief Medical Officer.”

  That stopped Hamon’s laughter. He stood up, shocked to silence in mid-guffaw. “You’re offering us both positions?” he demanded in rampant disbelief.

  “Of course. Is there any other option?”

  “Then you don’t plan to conveniently ship me off to the ends of the galaxy, while you quietly repatriate Marthe and the children home to Hathe?”

  Her father stared. “Why should I think that Marthe would ever agree to such a thing?”

  “Then why did you send for your father?” exclaimed a now truly puzzled Hamon, turning to confront Marthe.

  “For help. That’s all.”

  “Help to return home,” he charged flatly.

  “No. Not without you.”

  “It would not be possible in any case,” added her father, “with or without your husband. Since you left, the name of Radcliff has become the most hated on Hathe, encapsulating for many their feelings towards the entire Terran race. They have been denied their revenge and have turned instead to black myth, cloaking your husband in notoriety. Neither you, nor your children, are ever likely to be safe on Hathe again.” His voice saddened as he watched her, unable to hide from him the grief his words brought her. “I am so sorry, my dear,” he said, catching her and soothing her as he had been used to so many years before, when she was a child.

  He turned to Hamon. “I understand you had planned to become free traders, your home a ship. I have to tell you, my daughter can’t live like that. You know she loves Hathe, but it is not the people alone that hold her heart. It is the very soil of the planet, the wind in the sky and the animals and plants that grow there. My wife would watch her at play as a child, and say to me that Marthe almost became one with the country, listening to the rhythms of the world with her whole body. She can’t survive in space alone, devoid of the seasons and cycles of a planet. And you strike me, Major, as one who would understand this.”

  “Yes,” said Hamon quietly. “It’s the same for me with Earth. Parts of it are unforgettably beautiful.”

  “And yet you chose a life in space?”

  “We had no choice. It was decreed by my father, and by the Hathians who hate us.”

  “Now you do have a choice. What do you say?”

  Hamon was silent. Marthe drew back from her father and gave her hand to her husband. She knew what he was thinking. Annan IV. The most recently discovered of the Earth-type worlds, but unimaginably distant, situated at the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

  He spoke then, his words the echo to her thoughts. “It takes ten years by military frigate to get there, let alone by the slow freighters you would be using for settlers. It is a one way trip you offer us.”

  “That’s true,” agreed an Castre, “though it’s not as bad as you think. The settlers’ ships are to be fitted with a newly developed drive system, which should cut the trip down to just two years.”

  “I’ve heard no talk of such a drive,” countered
Hamon.

  “You wouldn’t have. It was a Hathian development. Marthe, do you remember the changes we had to make to the shuttles on the run from Hathe to the moon base on Mathe?”

  “Yes. They needed to be silent, undetectable by Terran technology, and energy efficient.”

  “They also turned out to be faster than anything built previously. The new drive can bend space to a greater extent during hyperdrive than the old standard. Hence you need fewer interplanetary hops, giving a much shorter transit time. With a four year round trip, you’re not out of reach if you strike trouble. And trade becomes an option.”

  “Giving the new colony both increased security and economic viability,” said Hamon.

  “Exactly, Major. I told the committee you were ideal for the job.”

  Hamon laughed and shook his head ruefully. Then he looked at Marthe and she knew it was going to be all right. He gave her the smile that she knew even his mother had never seen. “What do you say, my heart? Shall we brave it?”

  “Annan IV is said to be very beautiful. Maybe more so than Earth or Hathe. Yes, I think we must,” she said, and knew her smile was the equally rare one saved for him alone.

  It was the turning point—not the final acceptance that they should turn colonist, but a beginning none the less. Much was still to be resolved, and would be argued over mercilessly during the coming months, but right from that moment, Marthe knew she would be going. She saw it in Hamon too. She would catch the spark of excitement in his voice, or see it in the sudden flying up of an eyebrow as he put forward his demands for the enterprise—then proceeded to inform the committee in blistering terms exactly why it must comply with his lists and of certain failure following any deviation.

  The most obvious snag surfaced early on. They were discussing the settlers, three thousand brave and foolhardy souls.

 

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