Captain Serrano 2 - Sporting Chance

by Moon, Elizabeth

  Skoterin looked. "Yes, ma'am. 'Course, I don't know what it means. Jump points and stuff, but not what."

  "That's fine, then. Go on back to bed." When Skoterin had left the bridge, Heris turned to Oblo.

  "Check the course Sirkin laid in against those sheets, and make sure she actually used the current data. I don't want us stumbling into Benignity space because of Sirkin's carelessness."

  "Yes, ma'am." Oblo went to work. Heris sat there, wishing she were back in bed with Petris, but knowing it was too late. It seemed their jinx had returned. Besides, something nagged at her. Skoterin's story had been plausibleand Skoterin wasn't the problem anywayso what could Sirkin have been up to, besides getting current data? Had she known the lawyers were aboard the Station just then? Had she wanted Skoterin to be seen and questioned? Ifsomehowshe had managed to let them know that the ship in dock was Cecelia's yacht, then getting Skoterin out there to be seen was one way of giving the enemy a complete crew list. They already knew about the others; she had counted on Skoterin going unrecognizedand now they knew about Skoterin, too.

  That didn't satisfy her either, but she could not reconcile the two Sirkins, the two possible explanations for sending Skoterin out.

  Next mainshift, Cecelia sent for her. Heris came into Cecelia's suite to find her sitting up in the hoverchair, an attendant with her.

  "We didn't have time to explain all Lady Cecelia's signal system to you," the attendant said, before Heris could even greet her employer.

  "Lady Cecelia," Heris said pointedly, "Always good to see you."

  "Bev . . . will . . . help . . . you," Cecelia said.

  "Fine; I'll be glad to learn whatever I can. Are you interested in what's been happening with your ship?" Cecelia's shoulder jerked. Was that a response?

  "That is Lady Cecelia's easiest way to say 'yes,' " the attendant explained. "Lady Cecelia, show her 'no.' " That was the other shoulder. Heris realized that what she had taken for uncontrollable twitching in the shuttle on the way up had been Cecelia "talking."

  "Right shoulder for 'yes' and left shoulder for 'no'?" Heris asked. Cecelia gave a quick jerk of her right shoulder. "I got that. What next?"

  What next took longer to learn, but an hour later, Heris was a good bit more comfortable with twitches, jerks, hand clenches, and the timbre of the synthesized voice. Cecelia had even allowed her to hear her own voicedistorted, uneven in volume and pitch, but her biological voice.

  "I'm amazed," Heris said. "I confess I hadn't imagined anything like this. It's so different from" From the inert helplessness she'd been told of, or the full recovery of a feisty, healthy woman that she'd hoped for.

  "We didn't dare try a regen tank," the attendant said. "Use of regen tanks with neurological problems is tricky at best. You sometimes get good responses, but more often the deficit 'hardens,' as it were. Much safer not to try it until neurochemical repair's been done. Then it's fine for dealing with residual physical deficits."

  "I . . . see." Heris remembered that she had more information on the techniques the Guerni Republic doctors had suggested. "I'm going to download everything I got in the Guerni Republic to your deskcomp . . . or . . . ?"

  Yes. A firm response. Heris wondered if the visual prosthesis allowed her to read displays, or could be hooked to a computer output, but she didn't like to ask. The attendant seemed to recognize her discomfort.

  "I can read it to Lady Cecelia; her visual capacity is fairly blunt at this time."

  "Mr. Smith . . . is . . . prince?" Cecelia interrupted. Heris was surprised.

  "No . . . he's the prince's double. Didn't I say that? I'm not sure where the prince is."

  "Not . . . double. He . . . is . . . prince."

  "Lady Cecelia . . ." Even though several dozens of people now knew about the clones, Heris was reluctant to discuss them in front of an attendant she didn't know. She picked her words with care. "Even though I admit he looks like the prince, and sounds like the prince, I have been informed by . . . er . . . reliable sources that he is not the prince."

  "C.l.o.n.e.?" That came out spelled, letter by letter, in the synthesized voice; evidently no one had thought she needed the whole word.

  "Er . . . milady, clone doubles are, as I'm sure you know, illegal."

  "Not . . . my . . . question . . ." Whatever her employer had lost, none of it had been intelligence points. Or the determination to find out what she wanted to find out. Heris mentally threw up her hands and answered.

  "Yes, milady, he's a clone. Moreover there are several clone doubles." Quickly, as clearly as she could, she explained the king's mission, her problem with the clones on Naverrn, and the discovery that Livadhi's ship had yet another one. "And we don't know which, if any, is the primethe prince. They call him their prime. They all have the same memories: they're given deep-conditioning tapes after each separation, so that they're up to date."

  "If . . . all . . . alike . . . doesn't . . . matter." Heris had privately thought this for some time; why not just declare one of the capable clones the prince, and quietly retire the damaged prince? The answer, of course, was that someone might have planned just that, and the apparently capable clone could be someone's pawn. So might the prince.

  "We left two of them at Guerni, and brought one along as a decoy, for the safety of those in the medical center. If Sirkin hasn't botched our course, we'll have them all back together and then let the doctors sort it out. If they can."

  Cecelia scowled, as difficult an operation as her smile. "That . . . nice . . . Sirkin? What . . . is . . . wrong?"

  "I don't know. You remember her lover was killedwell, I made allowances for that. She seemed to be coming out of it, doing better, until after we'd left Naverrn. Then she started making careless mistakes, doing sloppy work." Heris paused. She still couldn't reconcile the Sirkin who did the calculations for those emergency jumps with someone who would forget to make necessary log entries, leave switches on the wrong settings and so forth. She took a deep breath. "I'm cancelling her contract when we get to Guerin. I won't risk your lifeor mine, for that matteron someone like that."

  No. No mistaking that answer.

  "Lady Cecelia, I must. I liked her too; you know I did. But a navigator's error can kill the whole crew. I've talked to her, Oblo's talked to herwe've all tried to help her. She made another serious mistake after we left Rotterdam. I can't take the chance."

  No. "Wrong . . . you . . . are . . . wrong." Lady Cecelia's synthesizer had little expression, but there was no way to miss the strong emphasis of that shoulder jerk.

  "I wish I were," Heris said. She debated telling Cecelia of her other suspicions about Sirkin and decided against it. If the girl merely had personal problems, she would not want to have planted other ideas. Time would tell. Besides, Cecelia was a fine one to give warningsshe had ignored Heris's warnings, and look what happened. She glanced at the wall display. "I'm sorry, but I need to get back to the bridge. We can discuss Sirkin later. We're coming into a series of critical jumps to circumnavigate Compassionate Hand territory."

  When she returned to the bridge, Skoterin smiled at her from the secondary Nav board, and Sirkin was nowhere to be seen. Fine. If Issi and Oblo felt more comfortable with an old crewmate there instead of an unstable civilian, she'd accept that.

  The first three jumps went without incident. Here the Benignity had thrust a long arm into former Familias space, but since there were no habitable worlds in the area no response had been made. It was easy enough to jump over the Compassionate Hand corridor; in fact, it set up a nice series of jumps to avoid the rest of the Benignity. The only tricky bit was a rotating gravitational anomaly in the neighborhood of the fourth jump point. After bouncing through the first three jumps, it was necessary to drop into normal space and time the next jump to avoid the rapid G changes of the anomaly's active arm. Current chartssuch as those Skoterin had picked up from Rotterdam Stationgave ships the best chance to get through that fourth jump with the least wasted time. A mistake in timing
could send a ship directly into the Benignityand the Benignity was known to take advantage of any such lapses.

  Heris reviewed the charts several times before that critical fourth jump to make sure their course would not take them too close to the Benignity. Even if it did, they should be safe: they were small, fast, and it would be sheer bad luck if anyone were patrolling the area where they might emerge. She had Oblo check and recheck the course too, both against the charts and against older references.

  "The new one's a bit closer, but the border shifts over there, with the anomaly and all. I'd say this was fine."

  "Very well." They dropped back into normal space on the mark; Oblo pulled up scan data at once, and began cursing. Heris didn't have to ask. Somethingand she wouldn't wager it was sheer bad luckhad gone wrong.

  "We're off courseway off course." He threw the display up on the main screen. "We should be there" A green circle, fairly near the red dashed line that represented the border of the Benignity. "And instead we're here." Another green circle, this one not so close to the red dashed line, on the opposite side. "And we're entirely too near a gas giant to play games with jumps out. We'll have to crawl it."

  "Just what system are we in?" Heris asked.

  "Nothing we want to be in." Oblo was scrolling past entries in the reference library, looking for a chart with more detail. "Ah. Not good. Not good at all. The Benignity has bases on the larger moons of this big lump of gravity we're too close to, and the way we dropped out of jumpspace on their doorstep, they could hardly miss us."

  "It can hardly be an accident," Ginese said. Neither he nor Meharry turned from their boards. "Coming out right on top of a Benignity base . . . it has to be . . ."

  "I know," Heris said. She swatted down the last of her regrets, and touched the control that would lock Sirkin in her quarters, for all the good that would do now. At least she couldn't cause any more mischief. Then she opened the ship's intercom and explained, as briefly as she could, what had gone wrong. "I want Mr. Smith and Lady Cecelia protected, while we have any options at all." There weren't any options, if the Compassionate Hand responded. She would ask Lady Cecelia, out of courtesy, but was sure she'd prefer death to being a Compassionate Hand captive. As for Mr. Smith, he could not be allowed to fall alive into their hands.

  "Captain" That was Ginese. "Ships are on us, and their weapons are hot."

  "How many?" she asked.

  "Only two," he said, sounding surprised. So was she. If she'd been that base commander, if she'd known (and he must have known) such a prize was coming, she'd have had a net of every available craft, just in case.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sirkin, slumped in dull misery on her bunk, heard first the delicate snick of the door lock going home, and then the intercom. She clenched her hands in her quilted coverlet. It was impossible. She had checked and rechecked that course; she had paid attention to every warning in the charts . . . she could not have made such an error. But here they were, and of courseshe had to admit the logic of itthe captain had decided she was responsible. She was the traitor.

  I am not! She wanted to scream that aloud, but what good would it do? No one would believe her. All the miseries of the past months landed on her again. Amalie's weakness and Amalie's betrayal . . . and then Amalie's death, the way that mutilated face and body looked in the morgue. Hot tears rolled down Sirkin's face; she didn't notice. And she had tried, tried so hard to work her way out of it. She had acted cheerful; she had gone on working. She had even enjoyed (and felt guilty for enjoying) those visits with Lord Thornbuckle's daughter. Her hand strayed to the locket Brun had bought her; inside was the lock of Amalie's hair Meharry had snipped. Brunif Brun were here, she wouldn't believe it was Sirkin's fault.

  Except it had to be. She knew Oblo and the others couldn't be doing it; they were too loyal to Captain Serrano. Besides, why would they start playing tricks now, when everything had gone so well on the way back from Sirialis? It made no sense. She knew she was no traitor; she knew she had done her work carefully. Yet the work she did came undone somehow, between one watch and the next, and if it wasn't Oblo or Issi Guar, who could it be? Was she going crazy? Was she losing her memory? Had someone planted some kind of mind-control in her? The thought terrified her. She sank into a daze of misery, staring at the opposite bulkhead.

  When her door lock clicked again, she thought someone had come to kill her. She didn't really care anymore, she told herself, but her gut churned with fear and she felt icy cold. She watched the door slide open with sick dread.

  "I . . . know . . . you . . . didn't . . . do . . . that . . ." Lower than she was looking, in the hoverchair, Lady Cecelia. She had not seen Lady Cecelia since she came aboard, and the shock brought her out of herself. She rolled off the bunk and stood up, instantly dizzy from time she'd spent motionless.

  "Sit . . . down . . . don't . . . faint."

  Sirkin struggled with her dizziness and finally did what she was told, slumping back to the bunk. Lady Cecelia carried a set of keying wands, and looked as smug as her condition allowed.

  "You shouldn'tthe captain will be really angry"

  "Let . . . her."

  "But she's rightsomething is wrong, and it must have been my fault, because I know Oblo wouldn't" She was babbling, and couldn't stop; she wanted to cry and fought not to.

  "She . . . is . . . wrong . . . I . . . told . . . her . . ."

  "Did she say you could let me out?" Hope rosemaybe the captain had found out what really happened; maybe it wasn't her fault after all. Lady Cecelia's face contorted with what she wanted to say, and couldn't.

  "Not . . . that. . . . Earlier . . ." Lady Cecelia guided the hoverchair into the cubicle, crowding the bunk, and closed the door behind her. "She . . . doesn't . . . know . . . I . . . came . . . here. . . . She . . . is . . . wrong . . . about . . . you."

  "How do you know?" Rude, she realized a moment later, but she had to know.

  "Age . . ." Lady Cecelia said, and grinned a death's head grin. "You . . . are . . . not . . . that . . . kind . . . of . . . girl." She held up her hand, a clear signal for Sirkin to listen without interrupting. "Who . . . joined . . ." Pause. "Ship . . . last?"

  That had to mean crew, Sirkin thought. "Vivi Skoterin, just before we left Rockhouse. She's from the ship Captain Serrano had in the R.S.S. She's an environmental tech."

  "Where . . . now?"

  "On the bridge, I expect. Oblo asked her to stand in for me as navigation second during the jumps."

  "No . . . Mistake . . ."

  "Well, she's not trained as a navigator, but all she has to do is check the numbers as Oblo enters them."

  "No . . . that . . . is . . . the . . . mistake."

  She wasn't getting all that Lady Cecelia meant.

  "She . . . is . . . problem . . ."

  Sirkin stared at the old lady, shocked.

  "Skoterin? But she'sshe's one of them. She served with them before. They trust her" Even as she said it, she saw the flaw in that. They trusted her; it didn't make her trustworthy. "She couldn't have . . ." she breathed, even as she realized that Skoterin might very well have been able to make Sirkin look incompetent. "She . . . she brought me those chartsthe ones I used to set up the course . . . the wrong course." Inside, a great joyous shout in her head: Not my fault. It's not my fault. I'm not crazy.

  Lady Cecelia nodded. "She . . . made . . . you . . . look . . . bad . . ." Long pause. "Captain . . . did . . . not . . . look . . . further . . . mistake."

  Sirkin's relief rebounded to fear. "It's too late, though. We're going to be attackedcaptured"

  "Not . . . captured . . ." Lady Cecelia's head jerked through a slow shake. "It . . . is . . . too . . . convenient . . . if . . . we . . . disappear. Prince . . . me . . . and . . . all."

  "We do have weapons; we might fight free," Sirkin said hopefully. "That is, if Vivi hasn't"

  "She . . . would . . . have . . ." Lady Cecelia said. "But . . . prince . . . help . . ." She turned the hoverchair, o
pened the door again, and started out as Sirkin stood up uncertainly. "Come . . . with . . . me . . ."

  * * *

  Once the enemy ships began their stalk, Heris gave no further thought to her passengers. At the end, if capture seemed likely, she'd make sure they didn't suffer, but now she had a battle to fight. Maybe.

  "How far do we have to go before we can jump?" she asked Oblo.

  "A long way . . . my first approximation is over seven hours. Thing's got moons as massive as your average planetwe don't want to be wrong . . ."

  "Finekeep an eye on it. Arkady, what are we facing?"

  "Right now just two, but of course our scans are skewed at this relative velocity. Looks like they knew what vector to expect for our insertion but not how much vee we'd have on us. They're running parallel and catching up. And no, we can't outrun them, not if they're the usual C.H. cruiser-weight." He paused, and transferred his scan data to her display. "You can see the weaponryall hot and ready to fire. Want me to bring them up? I don't think it's enough to scare them off, but"

  "No. We can't bluff, but maybe we can surprise them when it counts." Heris glanced over at his boards, where the status lights showed ships' weapons as strings of green lights, each column tipped with one yellow. "I wonder why they didn't take us when we dropped out," she asked, not expecting an answer. "The logical thing for them to do is blow us awayno one knew we would be inside Benignity spaceand if they did know, they'd shrug and go 'Oops.' If we quietly disappear, it solves a lot of problems for some powerful people."

  "I'd be glad to quietly disappear if I could figure out how," Oblo said, scowling at his board. "Vivi, pull up this section in Shirmer's Atlas, will you? Maybe they've got something"

  "Yessir." Heris watched as Skoterin picked her way around the backup navigation board, punching first one key then another. Slowof course, she didn't know the board well; it wasn't her specialty. If only Sirkinthe good Sirkinhad been there . . . but no use wishing. Suddenly Ginese and Meharry both cursed and started tapping at their boards.