LC01 Sweet Starfire

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  She cleared her throat. “I just wanted to tell you that we’re approaching Lovelorn. The ship seems to be altering course. I assumed that, as pilot in command, you might have some interest in the matter.”

  “Not much,” Severance assured her. “This baby can land herself if necessary.” Nevertheless he went forward to check the winking lights on the command console. “Saints know she’s done it before.” He yawned and massaged the back of his neck with one scarred hand as he stood staring down at the controls.

  “Severance?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “What is that instrument you carry? The one you had in your hand a moment ago?”

  “It’s a remote for a Screamer.” He leaned down and depressed a red-lit control, watching the screen in front of him as he did so. Severance Pay banked gently into a turn.

  “I’ve never heard of a Screamer,” Cidra said.

  “I don’t imagine you’ve got a lot of use for them in Clementia. They’re not exactly legal.”

  “But what does it do?”

  “It’s very good at making uninvited visitors scream.”

  His obvious preoccupation bothered her. “That’s not much of an explanation,” she said reproachfully. Cidra was accustomed to an educational system that answered all questions as completely as possible. She was also trained to keep asking questions until she was satisfied with the answers.

  Severance shrugged, still watching the landing setup on the screen. “It’s a device that’s designed to jam the frequency of human nerve impulses. That’s about the only way I can explain it. I’ve got the main system installed here in the ship. I carry the remote with me.”

  “Scates didn’t scream when you used it on him.”

  Severance glanced at her. “He was already half out. The remote just finished the job you’d started.”

  Cidra stiffened. She wasn’t sure if she had been rebuked. But her curiosity persisted. “Does the device function automatically whenever someone comes aboard?”

  “It can be set that way. I leave it on when I’m gone and switch it off with the remote when I’m ready to come back aboard. But it can also be triggered manually. See that switch there on the console?”

  “Yes.”

  “That will trigger it. There’s another one back near the head of my bunk.”

  “You would turn it on while you, yourself, were on board? What about your own nerves?” she asked.

  Curious little thing, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized formally. “I don’t mean to pry into your private business.”

  “Uh-huh.” He sounded skeptical. “Well, the answer is that I can set the remote to protect me from the effects of the main system. Fred’s safe because his nerves work on a different frequency than ours. Have a seat, Cidra, we’re ready to hit dirt.”

  She realized that his patience had reached its limit, so obediently she strapped herself into the passenger seat and fixed her gaze on the lights of Lovelorn. A few moments later Severance Pay settled gently down into the landing field, and Severance cracked the hatch.

  “I’ll be gone for about an hour. No more than that. We haven’t got time for you to wander outside and have a look around. You wouldn’t find much of interest, anyway. This is a pretty dull town. You stay here and guard the castle. When I return, I’m going to put this ship into space as fast as possible. If you’re not here, you’ll get left behind. Clear?” He sealed the collar of his gray ship suit as he spoke.

  Cidra nodded, and then asked impulsively, “Have you ever seen a real castle, Severance?”

  He glared at her. “It was a figure of speech, not an invitation to more questions.”

  “I’ve heard that the Ghosts left behind a structure that might have been a fortress,” she ventured thoughtfully. “On Renaissance.”

  “Why don’t you take a nap, Cidra?”

  Her eyes widened. “I couldn’t do that. You’re leaving me in charge.”

  Severance muttered something unintelligible and started through the hatch. “That was a figure of speech too. Forget I said it. Fred is in charge. Stay out of trouble, Cidra, if you want to see Renaissance.” With that he vanished into the cool Lovelorn night. The hatch hissed shut behind him, sealing and locking itself.

  Cidra felt movement near her sandaled feet and looked down. Fred was investigating the hem of her black-and-silver robe. Even as she watched, Cidra saw his three rows of teeth appear. She yanked the fabric out of reach just in the nick of time.

  “Don’t you dare chew on my clothes! Just because you’re the one who is officially in charge, don’t get the idea you can terrorize innocent passengers.” Then she smiled at the creature. Fred continued to expose his teeth, and Cidra chose to believe he was smiling back. She reached down to scoop him up into her arms and discovered it was difficult to pick up a rug. There seemed to be no stable bone structure inside Fred.

  He didn’t appear to mind the awkwardness of her grip, however. He simply wrapped himself around her forearm and continued to grin. Cidra looked for something resembling eyes.

  “You’re a Lovelady rockrug, aren’t you? I’ve seen holotapes of your kind sunning themselves on mountain rocks. How do you like shipboard life?”

  There was no answer, but the three sets of teeth disappeared into the tatty fur covering. As Fred settled down to sleep on her arm Cidra thought she saw a couple of small black eyes wink shut. It was hard to be certain because of the scraggly fur. Her arm felt pleasantly warm with the rockrug wrapped around it.

  She wandered around the tiny cabin, investigating the functional, if spartan, lavatory facilities and the miniature galley with its preserver and heater. She checked the preserver to see if there were enough nonmeat food packs aboard to hold her until Renaissance. It was a limited selection, at best. Teague Severance was definitely carnivorous. Typical Wolf. Well, if he were willing to do without some of the vegetable packs, she might not starve to death. For someone who had been brought up to appreciate exquisitely prepared food, the prospect of two weeks of preserved vegetables was not a pleasant one.

  But one had to make sacrifices when one set out on a quest, Cidra reminded herself as she shut the preserver. The heroes in the First Family novels always sacrificed comfort when they went adventuring. She ought to know. She was an expert on First Family novels. The only real expert in Clementia. She wandered over to the sleeping berths and fished around beneath Severance’s bunk for her precious pack of books. Before she found it, she encountered a small metal chest wedged in behind the crate of ale.

  She was far more intrigued by the unimposing storage container than she should have been, perhaps because she knew immediately that the box would contain something that was very personal to the enigmatic man who was taking her into space. For the first time in her life Cidra found herself wanting to explore the private side of another human being without waiting for an invitation. It took an amazing amount of fortitude to push the unopened chest back into the sticky storage net. But the ingrained rules of privacy were far too strong in her to allow Cidra to do otherwise. She pulled out the pack of books.

  Her mind and body had settled down again. She would happily occupy the next hour reading. She deliberated between the elegantly worked volume of Nisco’s Serenity and Ritual and the anonymous collection of essays and poetry known as Passages to Appreciation. She knew she ought to choose something from one of them, but somehow she wasn’t in the mood. Cidra dug a little deeper into the pack and came up with a hidden bundle of data slips that contained her collection of novels. Novels didn’t warrant much more than cursory interest on the part of Harmonics specializing in social history. She’d had no competition when she’d chosen to become an expert on them. But Cidra loved novels. She had acquired a sizable collection on slips, and when the time had come to leave Clementia, she had been unable to abandon them.

  Cidra removed the reader and a slip that contained one of her favorite tales and curled up on the lower berth to read once more th
e adventurous story of a mythical First Family colonist. Without any hesitation at all she skipped along until she came to the love scenes. The love scenes in such stories held an interest for her that she had never stopped to analyze. But she was more exhausted than she realized. Cidra was in the middle of a torrid seduction when she fell asleep.

  It was the distinct impression of wrongness that awoke her a few minutes later. For a moment she lay quietly, eyes closed, and tried to analyze the feeling. She immediately realized that Fred was no longer wrapped around her arm. She could feel the warmth of him lying on her stomach, but he didn’t seem quite as boneless as he had earlier. There was a tension in him that had communicated itself to her and awakened her.

  Cidra opened her eyes and looked up into the muzzle of a Garing Immobilizer. A part of her recognized the classic safeguard side arm, even while her brain sought to adjust to the shock of seeing one pointed at her. A large, gloved hand was wrapped around the grip.

  “Just keep calm, lady, and nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  At the sound of the rough voice Cidra managed to jerk her eyes from the Immobilizer to the swarthy face of the safeguard holding it. When he saw her stricken look, he smiled bleakly and used his free hand to display his certificate of authorization.

  “I don’t understand,” Cidra murmured, confusion replacing some of the initial fright. Harmonics never had trouble with the authorities for the simple reason that Harmonics never committed crimes. Both safeguards and Harmonics knew it. She had grown up with that serene knowledge. It was built into her. Then she remembered Scates lying on the floor of her hotel room. “What’s wrong? He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  The man holding the Immobilizer appeared amused. “Who? Severance? As far as we know. Don’t worry about him, he’ll be back in about forty minutes. He ran into a little delay collecting his mail, you see. We arranged it that way.”

  They didn’t seem to know about Scates. Feeling simultaneously relieved and guilty, Cidra relaxed slightly. “But what are you doing here?” She realized that a second uniformed man was standing near the command console, and her searching gaze rested briefly on him. “How did you get on board? The hatch was sealed.”

  The man standing over her answered. “Didn’t you look at my certificate? We’re port security. We have bypass plates for all registered mail ships. Now sit up very slowly. You from Clementia?”

  She nodded. Fred scuttled down into her lap as she sat up cross-legged on the bunk. Her hand brushed past the small switch that could activate the Screamer, but Cidra hardly noticed. She was watching Fred bare his teeth. He didn’t appear to be smiling this time.

  “Good. That should make things nice and simple. We won’t have any trouble with you, will we?”

  Obediently Cidra shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “Fine.” He glanced at his companion. “We won’t even need to put a tangier on her, Des. She’s a Harmonic. She’ll stay out of trouble.”

  “But what do you want? If you have business aboard, I would have been happy to open the hatch. I don’t understand what this is all about.” Cidra turned an unwavering gaze on the armed man. “Whatever it is you’re after, you should consult with the master of the ship.”

  “We’re not quite as formal here in Lovelorn as you folks are in Clementia. We don’t always have time for good manners. What we’re after is in the cargo bay, and on this ship it can only be unsealed through the command console.”

  Cidra kept her hands carefully folded in front of her. “Then you should definitely speak to Teague Severance.”

  The safeguard grinned. “He’s not likely to be very helpful under the circumstances. We’re here to remove some cargo he picked up in Port Valentine.”

  “But the shipment from Port Valentine is scheduled to be taken to an outpost on Renaissance.” Cidra kept her voice very clear and polite. She betrayed nothing of the uneasiness she felt, realizing that her best defense right now lay in maintaining the impression these men had of her. They couldn’t have dealt with many Harmonics. In their line of work they simply weren’t likely to encounter people from Clementia. Her appearance and dress had led them to mistake her for a Saint, so she would play the part.

  “Don’t worry yourself about it, Otanna. This isn’t Harmonic business. This is a matter of port security.” The man holding the weapon spoke to the silent figure by the console. “Find what we need, Des?”

  “It’s here. The bypass is working through possible code combinations now. We’ll have the bay opened in a minute or so. What about her?”

  “She’s not going to give us any trouble.”

  The first man holstered the Immobilizer and smiled again. He smiled a lot, Cidra thought. Too much. She didn’t like him, and neither, apparently, did Fred. There was a curious humming sound coming from the vicinity of the three rows of teeth. Automatically Cidra reached out to stroke the rockrug.

  “We’re all set,” the man called Des announced with cool satisfaction. “The bay’s open. Let’s get the stuff and get out. I don’t want to be hanging around here when Severance returns.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” The first man started for the rear of the cabin where the inside cargo hatch was located.

  The valuable shipment lay undefended. It was COD, Severance had said. He would get nothing for it if it wasn’t delivered. With a kind of stark clarity Cidra realized that she had to act. In Severance’s absence she was in charge of his ship. “Guard the castle,” he had told her.

  Yet these men were official representatives of Lovelorn law. The law was one of the few formalized institutions Wolves had. It was to be respected. Harmonics knew it often fell short of the ideal, but that was no excuse for failing to honor it. Still, she felt she had to do something.

  “Wait,” Cidra called urgently as the first man was about to step into the cargo bay. “I must protest this action. I insist you wait until Teague Severance returns. This is his ship and his cargo. You must discuss this with him.”

  “Why don’t I just go ahead and put her out?” Des unholstered his weapon and calmly pointed it at Cidra.

  “Forget it. She not going to get in our way. Give me a hand, Des. I knew we should have brought a servocart. This thing’s heavy”

  “Please,” Cidra said, “I’m asking one last time that you wait and take this up with the ship’s master.”

  “Shut up, lady. You’re beginning to annoy me. Why don’t you meditate or something?” Des started to follow his companion into the cargo bay.

  Fred suddenly leapt from Cidra’s lap, undulating with incredible speed across the cabin floor. Des whirled around, aiming his side arm at the small creature.

  “No!” Cidra stopped debating the philosophical quandary in which she found herself. Her hand swept out, yanking at the Screamer trigger imbedded in the wall behind her.

  And then she found out why the shipboard defense system was called a Screamer. She was barely aware of the strangled cries of the two safeguards. Her own mind was suddenly bursting with the screams of every nerve in her body.

  She had never experienced anything approaching such pain, and after the first few seconds, it held her totally immobilized. Lights flashed in front of her eyes, her ears seemed to hear every harsh, discordant sound in the universe, and her skin was on fire with a rash that made her want to claw at herself with her own nails. But she couldn’t even move her hand far enough to switch off the screamer. Cidra could only sit on the bunk and struggle to maintain some hint of sanity for a primitive part of her was still alert enough to fear being driven insane by the cacophony. And that was the most terrifying prospect of all.

  Instinctively she mentally grabbed for and clung to the intense discipline that was a fundamental part of her Harmonic training, using it to search for and find a thin sliver of consciousness and sanity to guide her through the pain. A true Harmonic would not have been able to apply her training under such fearsome circumstances. It was an ironic indication of Cidra’s lack of tru
e talent that she could use the training now in a way for which it had never been intended. But Cidra was not contemplating the right or wrong of it all; she was simply holding on for her life.

  Severance was worried even before he got out of the runner. He stood for a moment on the curb, the small courier pack locked to his wrist. Then he fished the computer remote out of his utility loop. The tiny notation on the screen informed him calmly that the Screamer had been activated. He stared at the object in his hand, unable to believe what he was seeing. He picked up the package of preserved vegetation meals he’d wasted valuable time purchasing on the way back to the ship and broke into a run.

  Severance Pay sat in heavy shadow on the landing field, giving no hint that all was pain and chaos aboard. The Screamer put out no audible sound. When Severance punched the remote to open the hatch, he found that it hadn’t been locked. Had Cidra left the ship after all? The knowledge infuriated him, but he found himself praying that she had. If she was still on board when the Screamer had activated, she would be limp, quivering marshjelly by now. He knew what the Screamer could do to the most hardened of Wolves. He couldn’t bring himself to imagine what it would do to someone who was almost a Harmonic in so many ways.

  Damning everything and everyone around him, Severance used the Screamer’s remote to cancel the defense system. But he knew that if Cidra was inside, the damage had been done. He leapt aboard, his eyes sweeping the ominously still cabin.

  For an instant he couldn’t see his passenger. She wasn’t on her bunk and she wasn’t lying on the floor. He saw the prone bodies of two men near the open cargo bay before he realized that Cidra was slumped on his bunk.

  “Damn it to a renegade’s hell. Cidra. Cidra.” He crouched beside the berth, searching for her throat pulse. It beat far too rapidly beneath his fingers. The stiffness in her body alarmed him more than anything else. She should be unconscious by now. Even a minute of the Screamer’s effects was sufficient to knock most people out. Yet the tension in her body indicated that on some level she was still aware, still trying to fight the nerve jamming impulses even though they had ceased. He began stroking her, petting her as if she were a wild creature he was trying to soothe and tame. There was no quick remedy for the Screamer’s damage. It took time to recover. Victims knocked unconscious generally awoke a long time later with a headache that could only be described as violent.