Price of Ransom

by Kate Elliott

  “Yes, I can,” demurred Jenny. “And I do. We have more serious problems to consider.” She applied a slight, but firm pressure on his arm and he sat, much unwilling. Letting go of him, she turned to smile coldly at Finch. “And perhaps an apology would be in order?”

  Finch glowered at the tabletop, looking not quite as sullen as Pinto.

  Paisley laughed. “Hurts, don’t it?” she said, but not in any triumphant way. “But it be sure I were already volunteered to sell my services, on Harsh, and it weren’t no happy time for me, that be ya truth.”

  Finch glanced up at her, looking at last a little shamefaced. “I forgot about that,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.” And looked down again.

  Paisley sat.

  “Thank you,” said Jenny with a sigh. She and Yehoshua exchanged a glance fraught with long-suffering complicity.

  “But it still doesn’t answer,” Finch muttered, unrepentant, “what we’re going to use to pay for supplies. We’ve only got two shuttles left, since we sent Machiko and his people off in the other one, so we can’t afford to lose one of those. And certainly none of us has any legitimate credit anymore, with or without clips to link into the bank net. I just don’t see what choice we have but to sell the Hierakas Formula. And I know,” he added with a swift glance to mollify Paisley, “how Lily—how the captain—feels about it being accessible to every citizen of Reft space.”

  “I don’t suppose that it’s occurred to any of you,” said Jenny softly, “that with a warship of this class, and a decent contingent of mercenaries, which we have, we don’t have to pay. We can just take what we need.”

  Yehoshua smiled slightly. Gregori stopped fidgeting. For once, Finch looked as righteously shocked as Paisley, and they began to protest vocally at the same moment, halting in confusion at the other’s words.

  The Mule hissed, long and sharp. “That would be immoral,” it said. “And perfectly human of you. I will have no part in such an enterprise.”

  “And in any case,” Pinto pointed out, “the people on Forsaken have never done anything to us.”

  Jenny grinned, glancing at Yehoshua again. “But if they had, it would be all right to take what we need by force?”

  “B’ain’t never right,” exclaimed Paisley.

  “Do you expect me to believe,” asked Finch, “that you, or any other tattoos—Ridanis—never stole from the people who weren’t Ridanis while you lived on Station? It’s common knowledge that it’s all right for Ridanis to steal from people who aren’t tattooed, just not from each other.”

  “Sure it be ya common knowledge,” replied Paisley scornfully, “cause it be ya easier to believe ya worst o’ us than ya truth. That way it be less burdensome to treat us so bad.”

  Finch blushed. It was a little hard to see, because of the duskiness of his skin, but the tightening of his mouth added to his expression of discomfiture.

  Yehoshua chuckled. “Hoisted you with that one, comrade.”

  Finch shoved back his chair and without a word stood up and stalked out of the mess.

  Paisley rose as well, looking abruptly worried, but Jenny caught her eye and shook her head. “Let him go, Paisley,” she said. “It won’t hurt him to dwell a little on his sufferings.”

  “But I didna’ mean—” began Paisley.

  “Paisley,” interrupted Pinto. “I can’t begin to understand how you can have any sympathy for that little bastard, considering how many times he’s made it quite clear how he feels about us filthy tattoos.”

  “Because he’s min Ransome’s friend,” said Paisley with dignity, “and because it be ya wrong o’ us to return prejudice with hatred.” She sat down, looking fierce and a little haughty.

  Yehoshua applauded softly. Jenny smiled. The Mule said nothing.

  “That’s fine,” said Pinto, looking disgusted, “for people like that writer, Pero, but look where he is now.”

  “Pinto! It be sore wrong o’ you to speak such o’ ya dead—”

  Gregori slipped out from under his mother’s careless touch and off his chair and padded out of the room, leaving behind what bid fair to develop into one of Paisley’s full-blown polemics. That she was the merest slip of a girl, scarcely twice Gregori’s age, seemed to amuse the others, but it depressed him. It was one of the reasons he so rarely spoke up. If they found her opinions, as passionate and generous as they were, more delightful than provoking, and she so old as sixteen, what then would they think of him, a thin sprite of some seven ship’s years, expressing the deep and private thoughts that moved him to wander this ship? Paisley might be oblivious, or immune, to their amusement, but he could never be.

  So he went to find the one person who always took him quite seriously, and who never treated him like a child. He went to Medical.

  He checked the lab first, but the counters and console bays where Hawk could often be found working were silent and dark. Slipping past the Ridani guard who was always left as a precaution at the Medical door, he padded into the main ward.

  Hawk’s blue hair was harder to distinguish in the half light, but still his figure was the first and most obvious one in the large space. The broad flats of beds lay awash in light that, although dimmed even here, seemed brilliant compared to the severe rationing imposed on the rest of the ship. Hawk moved with quiet grace from couch to couch, checking stats and speaking briefly with each couch’s occupant—those who could speak.

  Hawk’s assistant trailed after him, a young Ridani woman who had gotten medical technologist training when she had joined Jehane’s forces some four years back. To Gregori, it seemed that Flower lived and walked in perpetual amazement that someone of Hawk’s skill and experience would treat her, tattoos and all, with respect. Pausing to watch her as she bent over a patient, Hawk observing but not interfering, Gregori was not surprised that she and the other Ridanis had so readily defected to the mutiny.

  “His signs look ya better,” the assistant murmured. “But with ya trauma to ya head I just don’t know if he’ll ever regain consciousness.”

  Hawk laid a hand on the man’s brow, a gesture that to Gregori’s eye looked more like a benediction than one bearing any resemblance to the rude temperature-taking his mother caressed him with on those few occasions he had caught some illness.

  Hawk removed his hand and shook his head. “This one has gone deep,” he said softly. “I still can’t predict if we’ll be able to bring him back.”

  Flower stared raptly at him, admiring. He gave her a brief, if absentminded, smile and began to turn to the next couch.

  Stopped. Paused, as if some unseen information had just come to him, and turned abruptly to gaze right at Gregori.

  Gregori began to step forward.

  And realized that someone else had come in behind, and that Hawk’s attention had focused on this new arrival.

  “Hello, Gregori,” said the captain casually as she walked past him.

  Hawk moved obliviously past his assistant’s admiration and went to meet her. He did not touch her, but the force of his attention was almost tactile, it was so strong.

  “How are the casualties?” she asked, not so casually.

  “Six are still in a coma, eight are at least partially conscious but seriously disabled, and the other nine you’ve seen in the convalescent ward. None of them are going to be active any time soon.”

  “Otherwise we would have shipped them off with Machiko. I know.” She looked troubled. “Hoy. Good thing there were fourteen well enough to be moved.”

  “Seven of the convalescents could have gone but asked to stay,” Hawk reminded her.

  “Mostly because of you,” she replied absently. The crease in her forehead that marked her brooding appeared as she spoke. Her eyes took in each still or restless patient in the ward, a concise survey, and she acknowledged Flower with a terse nod. “But too high a percentage of the power we’re using is routed into Medical to sustain these people. We have to go in to Forsaken, and except for those who specifically asked to stay with
us, I want the rest transferred to planetside hospitals.”

  “No,” said Hawk. He paused to flick a glance at the Ridani woman. She coughed self-consciously and, picking up her com-clip, walked out into the convalescent’s ward.

  Gregori slunk into the shadows of a far corner.

  “No,” Hawk repeated. “Maybe some of these people won’t recover, but none of them, even the ones who are recovering, will have anywhere near as good a chance for a normal recovery in Reft hospitals as on this ship.”

  “In your care,” she echoed, sounding a little irritated. “Damn it, Kyosti. How much mercy can you expect this ship to extend to people who may never be able to give service in return?”

  “Infinite mercy,” he said sharply. “And infinite compassion. That’s my business. You ought to understand why.”

  To Gregori’s surprise, she did not argue but instead sighed and drifted across to gaze at the occupants of the couches, her expression a mask behind which Gregori could not discern her true feelings. Hawk did not follow her, except with his eyes.

  “In any case,” Hawk added after she had visited most of the couches, “the care these people will receive once we get back to League space will as far exceed what I can provide in this unit as this units exceeds Forsaken’s hospitals.”

  “Kyosti, we don’t have enough power to find our way by trial and error and what sketchy charts this boat has to League space.”

  “I’m not giving up my patients, Lily.”

  She turned and walked briskly to the door, her face still a mask. “I’ll consider it,” she said brusquely as the door sighed aside to reveal the corridor and the Ridani guard, “but I may have no choice.”

  And she was gone.

  “Lily,” Hawk began, sounding annoyed and imploring at the same time. He lifted a hand to his hair, pulling his fingers through the coarse strands with a movement more troubled than angry. After a moment he dropped his hand and abruptly swiveled to look directly at Gregori, who was still huddled in the corner.

  Gregori emerged cautiously from the shadows.

  Hawk smiled, a little wryly. “You don’t need to look so apprehensive.”

  Gregori moved forward now to peer at the shifting stats at the base of one of the couches. “I’m not scared of you.”

  “Thank you,” murmured Hawk with an irony that Gregori did not understand and so ignored.

  “I just don’t want you to think I’m a sneak.”

  “You’re not a sneak, Gregori. You’re just a solitary child.”

  And Gregori felt that with those words, their understanding was complete.

  “Can we go run the topo … topograph program in the geography folder?”

  “I’ll bring it up for you,” said Hawk, beginning to sound distracted again, “but I can’t stay with you today.”

  Gregori sighed ostentatiously.

  Hawk smiled and reached out to ruffle the boy’s golden hair with surprising tenderness. “It’s a hard and lonely way to grow up, Gregori. Just remember to be true to yourself.”

  Gregori looked up at him. “Can I try the advanced program again?”

  Hawk chuckled. “Don’t push your luck. Yes, you can. Come on.”

  Hawk followed her trail to the mess, but by the time he got there she had already left.

  As had most of the others: Jenny lingered at a table, turning a ceramic mug slowly round and round with one hand as she waited for Lia to finish up in the galley.

  She looked up as Hawk came over to her. “Eight-hour rest shift, and then we’re going in.”

  “Going in?” He was distracted by the slow dissolution of Lily’s scent on the air. The monotone whirring of the ventilation system hung like the merest whisper over the sounds of Lia busy at the counter.

  “To Forsaken,” answered Jenny.

  The com chimed, and Finch’s voice came over it, repeating what Jenny had just said.

  “Ah,” said Hawk. He nodded at her, still preoccupied, and moved away, continuing his hunt.

  He ran her to ground in the captain’s suite on gold deck. The outer room was empty but easily accessible; the door to the inner had a special lock that could only be keyed in to a single person, so he had to wait, and identify himself, before it slid aside to reveal the captain’s most private sanctum.

  For some reason the designers, or the original captain, had chosen to make the room circular. The walls shone a burnished, deep gold, somehow inobtrusive, hiding closets, a terminal, and other arcana he did not know of. Two chairs, a dark wooden table—looking strangely primitive and yet complementing the tone of the walls—and a large bed completed the room.

  Lily was lying on the bed, ankles crossed, head resting on her linked hands. Her black hair spilled out across the pale coverlet that draped the bed’s surface. She was staring at the ceiling, and did not speak as Hawk entered and the door whispered shut behind him.

  He prowled the room a moment, touching a closet pad so that the wall slipped aside to reveal empty cupboards and two plain white tunics hanging from a bar. Lily’s scent had not yet permeated the chamber, but after three weeks it was beginning to. Machiko had not used this suite; perhaps he had found it too imposing, but in any case the only lingering aroma was of a woman, long dead, who smelled of a dry wit, deep cynicism, and unshakable courage. They lingered all over the ship, faint but unmistakable: the fragrance of the Forlorn Hope’s original crew, slowly being overlaid by its new inhabitants.

  Hawk turned from the closet and went to the bed. He lay down on it, next to her, on his side, propping his head up on one hand. “Where is Bach?”

  “On the bridge.” She continued to stare at the ceiling.

  He waited out her silence.

  “Did you know,” she began finally, “that the sta assigned to the ship with Machiko wouldn’t let the Mule into navigation? Of course, they left with Machiko, but I suppose it’s as well. I couldn’t keep the Mule down on the lowest deck just to please their prejudices. And despite Jehane’s”—her voice choked on the name momentarily—“avowed emancipation of the Ridanis, none of them were treated equally. It’s no wonder they all sided with us when it came to mutiny. I was told that Jenny had to stop Rainbow from slugging some guy who had spit on her once. I’m amazed the Hope made it to Arcadia intact in the first place.”

  Because she seemed in the mood to talk, he kept silent.

  “I’ve settled on a command structure,” she continued. “I’m going to leave Jenny as Commander for the military unit, and move Yehoshua to First Officer, but there’s no one on board who has the breadth of experience to be Second. And we’ve got to start intensive training utilizing Bach’s knowledge so we have a complete set of shifts on the bridge and in Engineering, at the least. With the seven convalescents added to the able-bodied, we can just cover it. If we can get them trained.”

  “What are we going to do when we get to Forsaken?”

  “Distribute the Formula.” She frowned and, finally, shifted her head to look at him. “I’m going to invite what’s left of Central’s forces to run with us.”

  “Are you really?” He grinned, quick and delighted with the audacity of it.

  “Short of force, it’s the only way I can figure to get supplied for that long trip given that we’ve got no credit to buy with.”

  “Get in trade for a better future,” he murmured. “I wonder if it will work.”

  She shifted her legs on the bed, crossing her ankles in the opposite direction. “Do you want to go back?” she asked, softly.

  “Lily, my heart,” he said, as slow as it was deliberate. “I don’t care where I go, as long as—” He stopped and thought better of revealing his hopes, and fears, too plainly to her.

  But her gaze, on him, was clear and suddenly acutely comprehensive. And without judgment against everything that she knew he was. “No, I don’t suppose you do.” She looked at him a moment longer before she sighed and turned her head once more to stare up at the ceiling. “I’m not sure I like this job,”
she muttered, sounding cross.

  For a moment he was taken aback. Then he understood that she meant, not him, but the job of being captain of the Forlorn Hope.

  She did not seem to need an answer, so he did not give her one. He just lay, enjoying the intimacy of their mutual silence. And in the slow seep of air through the vents, the measured rise and fall of her respiration, and the complex bouquet of her that he took in with each breath, he realized that he was content. It was a feeling he had not known since his childhood, before his mother and her clan had been forced by every good reason—none of which he could blame them for—to exile him to his father’s kin.

  She knew the truth, and she had not rejected him or used it to control him.

  He smiled. He thought of leaning across to kiss her, but there was time enough for that. Patients who needed and benefited by his care awaited him in Medical. Next to him lay a woman who was perfectly happy and perfectly comfortable—and perfectly passionate, at the proper time—when she was with him.

  He could not imagine any greater happiness.

  3 Fount of Blood

  THEY TOOK THEIR TIME, circling in, and broadcast their arrival across a wide band so as not to startle the undoubtedly nervous inhabitants of Forsaken and its twin orbiting Stations.

  “I’ve got a go-ahead from Station Alpha for docking,” said Finch at comm as they entered orbit.

  “Start docking countdown,” replied the captain, expressionless in her chair.

  “Hold on.” This from Yehoshua, on scan. “I thought there were only two military ships here. I’ve caught a third in Station Omega’s shadow.”

  “Can you get readings?” Lily asked sharply. “Give me what you’ve got.”

  A pause while Yehoshua transferred coordinates.

  “And we’ve got movement,” he added suddenly. “I don’t like this.”

  Lily cursed, hard and abrupt. “Weapons bank up,” she snapped. “Full alert. That’s the Boukephalos. Why didn’t we pick up any comm-traffic from them?”

  “They weren’t broadcasting!” Finch protested. He paled, but quickly regained his color when it became apparent that the captain accepted his explanation.