Sundowner

by Claremont, Chris

  Sundowner

  Nicole Shea 03

  By

  Chris Claremont

  * * *

  This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.

  SUNDOWNER

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace edition / July 1994

  All rights reserved. Copyright © 1994 by Chris Claremont.

  Cover art by Royo.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016.

  ISBN: 0-441-00070-3

  ACE®

  Ace Books are published by

  The Berkley Publishing Group

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.

  Printed In The United States Of America

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  * * *

  To Susan Allison and Ginjer Buchanan For all the faith and forbearance a writer could wish for in his publisher and editor.

  As friends and colleagues, I wouldn’t have gotten here without you.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  Golden sun. Golden sky. Golden land. Rolling country, a highland plain stretching along the seaward face of the continental spine, with good grass and water to feed the great herds that wander from north to south according to the dictates of the seasons. Good for prey, hard for hunters. Precious little cover, and not much better for habitation. Too much open space. Fast as you are, the prey is faster, their bodies built for flight, mated to senses designed to trigger them into action. They know their safety lies in numbers: stay with the herd, stay alive. Of course, that leaves the lame and the sick and the old as meat, but there’s no challenge in that.

  Nicole sensed the boat’s approach long before she ever saw it. The wind was strong off her quarter and she had Sundowner under full sail, genny and main trimmed to give her every possible knot, the boat heeling so much she was almost standing on the lower lip of the cockpit, tiller in both hands, teeth bared in a grin of fierce delight. No thoughts to mar the moment, no consideration of yesterday or tomorrow. Her strength, her boat, all alone against the elements.

  She knew she’d stayed out too long. Her skin had that stretched taut feel that meant her sun block had given up the ghost, and her muscles, especially across her back and arms, were just this side of trembling. Her grip on the lines wasn’t what it should be and her concentration was worse. Not that she was making mistakes. Not big ones, not yet.

  By rights, she should have headed for the barn hours ago. Would have, had she been flying. In the air she was the consummate professional. She went to sea to goof off, cut herself some slack, no matter that the environment was potentially just as hazardous.

  She was on a reach to Point Loma, at the mouth of San Diego Bay, when she suddenly looked back over her shoulder. She searched the water as she would the sky on a combat patrol, alert for the slightest sign of a hostile presence. Made a face and shook her head, wishing she had a third hand so she could rub her itchy scalp and possibly restore some semblance of order to her windblown salt-washed hair. She was thankful at least that she still wore it close-cropped, shorter in fact than a lot of men these days.

  A glance westward showed the sun just three diameters above the horizon, dusk then before she was tied up at her slip. Way it went sometimes, couldn’t be helped. The wind was great, the sea a match, the boat—her precious Bermuda Forty—an absolute joy. She’d gone so far out—too far actually for a solo sailor, even on a custom-rigged boat, experienced as she was—she’d been tempted to keep going. Almost as though she were testing herself, pushing the limit of how far she could go and still return within a day.

  Lately, she’d been turning for home that much more reluctantly, hearing ghostly echoes in the cockpit of that last bitter conversation with Alex Cobri. He had challenged her to do just that: cut the traces that bound her to the Air Force and NASA, to a space program that had abandoned her, just as he would do with his father. The two of them would sail off together past the ends of the Earth, charting fresh destinies unencumbered by the past.

  She hadn’t made that break. Too many hopes, too many dreams, a faith that hadn’t then been ready to die.

  She’d gotten what she wanted, reinstatement as a full-fledged astronaut. For all the good it did her. Five years later, she was still stuck on the ground. Just as Alex was planted in it.

  Another look, so sharp and sudden it caught her by surprise and prompted an acerbic mutter at instincts gone amuck. She’d also come to trust those instincts, so she eased off the main sheet to slow Sundowner’s headlong flight and ducked her head towards the radar repeater mounted beside the companionway at the front of the cockpit. Had to look twice to make sure she wasn’t seeing things when the display flashed the contact’s speed.

  Awareness now of the other craft’s engines, a basso rumble cascading across the wavetops, felt as much as heard, as a jet engine is on the flight line when it cycles towards full power. The boat was moving more slowly than she’d expected because the association in her mind was of an aircraft, and yet it passed her as though she were dead in the water, an expanded cigarette hull two-thirds out of the water, triple thrusters generating a white-water wake that rose almost as high as the bow. The boat was so beautiful it literally took her breath away, all sleek and streamlined, its power barely in check. It was almost Halyan’t’a in its functional elegance, a form designed as much for aesthetics as practicalities, so much so that it would look more at home in the sky than on the sea.

  She couldn’t help but be impressed and was rewarded for her distraction with a slap of water in the face as she fell off a point. By the time she looked up again, the cigarette was out of sight, already rounding the point and heading into the harbor proper.

  Autumn dredging was in progress at the yacht club, forcing members to relocate either to other moorings scattered around the anchorage or to other harbors entirely. Through a friend of a friend, Nicole had secured a slip at the shorefront hotel next door. She started furling her sails at the mouth of the bay, while there was still light enough to see, and kept a weather eye on lines and tackle as the automatic mechanisms tucked main and jib away. If herself was a classic design, the systems Alex had incorporated to enable one person to sail her safely were a masterpiece, and gave Nicole the sense that there was nothing she couldn’t do with the boat, nowhere she couldn’t go.

  The cigarette was parked at the end of one floating dock, as formidable at rest as in motion, almost predatory in its aspects. Nicole nodded to herself as she loafed past at finding her initial impression confirmed; there were Hal elements incorporated in its design. That was more and more the case these days, as contacts between Earth and the Hal Federacy broadened and deepened.

  Much of it due to her.

  Her own slip was on the same dock as the cigarette, halfway between it and the shore, amid a thicket of like-sized craft. She made the pivot perfectly, mind and body operating in sync with her boat; a touch or two on reverse throttle slowed enough to bring her to rest with hardly a bump on the bow fender.

  The boat securely tied, its equipment properly stowed, sh
e dropped into the cabin for her gear, found herself slump-sitting on the bunk, then flat on her back, unable to move as though held in place by the G-forces of a high-acceleration lift-off.

  She closed her eyes, figuring to open them again with the sunrise, but Alex’s heartbreaker features got in the way. He’d left the boat to her, as well as his membership in the yacht club, giving her the option, he said in his will (and she could see the devil’s grin on his face as he typed that, deliberately planting the seed of temptation), of changing her mind. She’d thought more than once of abandoning the boat—she couldn’t sell it, that was one of the codicils—but the simple fact was she loved Sundowner. And couldn’t help respecting Alex for the love and care and work he’d put into it. She’d done much the same herself rebuilding her own beloved Beech Baron; it was part of the heritage she’d drawn from her family’s home on Nantucket—you want something, go out and earn it.

  She swung her legs to the deck, sat a moment in what was now full dark broken only by abstract pools of light from the dockyard lamps shining through the cabin’s curtained ports. Then grabbed for her kitbag and headed out the door.

  Even tired as she was, she covered the distance to shore in long rangy strides, moving with deceptively effortless grace, noting as she did that the courtyard nestled between the hotel’s twin towers was unusually crowded. From the sounds—boisterous songs, occasional squeals of delight and mock alarm, the splash of someone taking a header into the pool—a right royal party was in progress.

  “Target acquisition,” someone called from the dockfront bar. Before she’d gone a couple of more steps she found her way blocked by a half-dozen young men, cut at first superficial glance as though from the same cookie-cutter mold. Similar height, similar build, mid-twenties, close-cropped hair, details smudged by a lack of direct light that reduced them to silhouettes; they wore cutting-edge Boy Toy civvies with the slightly self-conscious air of someone more used to a uniform, but were also possessed of the ballsy self-confidence of those who acknowledged no peer but their own breed. “Tachyon Topguns,” they called themselves, the best of the best, standard bearers of the High Frontier. Young astronauts assigned to the ever-growing fleet of starships streaking outward from the Sol System. Nicole knew the type; not so long ago—and yet in many ways better than a lifetime—she considered herself one of them.

  “Pretty lady shouldn’t go unescorted,” cried a voice from the shadows at the back of the crowd, to accompanying grunts of agreement and encouragement. Though the night was young, they were enthusiastically plowed, their behavior charmingly playful. Most of the crowd were American and military, but over the past few years—and especially since First Contact with the Hal and the passage of President Charles Russell’s One World Treaty—the pool of talent had expanded worldwide, as well as into the private sector.

  “And gentlemen,” Nicole responded easily, matching tone to mood, “should be courteous enough to let a lady pass.”

  She followed her words with some forward motion, sliding through the group with an ease that surprised them, and set off along the promenade towards the relative security of the Yacht Club gate. She didn’t think there’d be trouble but perceptions often got skewed at shindigs like this, one person’s harmless horseplay coming across as someone else’s premeditated assault. And while she could handle both, she was too tired to try.

  The lads didn’t take the hint and they brought friends. Probably considered this “rising to a challenge.” Fighter jock mentality in a world where dogfighting—in the classical air combat sense—had become virtually obsolete.

  “Except,” said one of them, a head shorter than she but broader in the shoulders, “when the lady hasn’t a clue what she’s missing.”

  Point taken, sort of. Nicole had never attended one of these grand and glorious blowouts, since—while she’d gone through the course—she’d never gotten a starship slot.

  That realization, and a sudden flash of envy that came from her fatigue, prompted her to reply with more of an edge than the moment called for. Even as she spoke, she knew she’d pushed too hard but it was too late for the words to be recalled.

  “Give it a rest, flyboys,” she said, putting a faint but distinct emphasis on the “boys.” “Go play with someone else, okay, I’m really not in the mood.”

  “Hey, Rocky,” called another among the crowd, “front and center, guy, we got a live one for you.”

  Nicole rolled her eyes, taking a reflexive step backward towards the edge of the walk, clearing just enough distance between herself and the crowd to give her full freedom of movement. She didn’t think about it, her body was responding to the situation of its own accord. Of course, these buttheads weren’t paying the slightest attention to her as an actual person—she was simply the object of their mass desire—so they hadn’t a clue as to what was happening, of how far and fast things would get out of hand if someone put a foot wrong. Nicole needed a way to defuse the confrontation, but nothing came to mind.

  Then her head snapped left as she caught the tang of a familiar scent mixed among the cologne and beer, the unique fragrance of high-country cinnamon common to the Halyan’t’a.

  The pilots were ushering someone new to the front of the crowd and at first glance a body’d be excused for assuming it was just one more of the same. Just as looped, just as rowdy, just as fixated on having a good time. Until he stepped into the clear and revealed himself to be an Alien.

  He was taller than most of those around him, able to look Nicole in the eye, but not as bulky—which was a deception, she knew, because Hal tended to have more muscle mass than humans of comparable size. His coloring was hard to tell in the garish yellow light of the stanchions that lined the promenade; the basic coat appeared to be grey, with a scattering of black dots, differing from the patterns of stripes that marked most of the Hal Nicole had seen. Two arms, two legs, arranged bilaterally on a central torso, with a head up-top. Disconcertingly like humanity. Mobile and expressive features—although his, potentially quite handsome by any standards, were somewhat coarsened by all he’d had to drink. Alcohol wasn’t an inebriate to them, but they had a fatal weakness for colas. The mix of sugar and caffeine hit their system as hard as hundred-proof liquor, producing an almost amphetamine high—which was at least superficially good-natured—combined with a near-total loss of inhibitions.

  In earlier days that discovery had led to some amusing, and embarrassing, moments. And ultimately, a tragic one, as some bright boys—out to determine a Hal’s ultimate capacity for indulgence—pushed past the cheerful facade and tapped into the warrior beneath.

  This one was close. The others should have known the signs, although it was more likely that everyone—including the Hal—figured they could handle whatever happened, no problem.

  He wore slacks under a wraparound tunic that had mostly pulled loose from its belt, rucked as well off to one side to flash a goodly portion of his chest. He had a can of soda in one hand, beer in the other, which he proffered sloppily to her along with what was meant to be a smile.

  “Go get her, Rocky, you flyin’, flamin’ Tomcat!” yelled a voice in an encouraging cheer that was applauded by the others. The Hal turned to them, arms going up in a triumphal pose.

  Nicole’s voice brought him back around to her so fast he twisted over his feet and nearly tumbled, a couple of pilots on either side grabbing for him reflexively as he started for the pavement. They hadn’t heard her, they weren’t meant to. The subvocalized rumble had been pitched for Hal ears alone, although Nicole knew the effort would leave her throat painfully sore for days.

  He recovered nicely, almost pulling off the deception that his stumble had been intentional.

  “What did you say to me?” he demanded, speaking English with a careful formality that was very much at odds with the moment.

  “Voulez-vous coucher, l’il Fuzz-buddy,” offered one of the others, provoking a round of cheers and comments that went totally ignored by the two principals.
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  Nicole answered with equal formality, but in Hal. She wanted to defuse the situation, not make it worse by shaming him.

  “This is not appropriate behavior,” she said, again pitching her voice into its lowest register. “Either for a professional officer or a guest on this world.”

  “Who are you to judge? Or tell me what to do?”

  She turned her head ever so slightly, allowing the light to catch the crystal stud she wore in her right ear. Even though its colors were distorted by the glare of the sodium arc lamp, the fireheart was still lit from within by its own unique radiance.

  The Hal’s face went slack with astonishment. The fireheart was the rarest gem known to his People, and represented one of their highest honors. Precious few Hal wore them and only one human.

  “Shea-Pilot? Who bears Shavrin’s name?”

  “Who shares her blood and hearth,” Nicole replied, letting him know precisely where she stood in the family, which also meant just how much he was about to screw up.

  The Hal took a step back, only in his case it was a simple retreat. His friends caught the change in mood—about as difficult as recognizing an instantaneous shift from midnight to midday—and that threw the entire crowd momentarily off-balance. Nicole immediately pushed her advantage.

  She singled out someone in the front rank.

  “You got some clout with this bunch,” she said, moving on without giving him time to reply. “Doesn’t matter, you’d better assume all you can, right now. Put him to bed.” She caught a flash of resentment from the Hal—“Rocky,” they’d called him—the beginnings of rebellion against her authority, and quelled it with a look.