Price of Ransom

by Kate Elliott

  “Weapons bank at full,” said Nguyen from his console. “But I’m registering considerable power drain on our reserve power.”

  “We try to bluff,” said Lily. “Open channels, Finch. I want a standard query to the Boukephalos.”

  “Hold on.” Finch punched his channel focus and made adjustments. “I’ve got comm coming in. Switching to speaker.”

  “This is Comrade Vanov commanding the Boukephalos.” The voice came loud and brassy. Finch hastily adjusted the volume. “We are in control of this system. You are in illegal possession of a government vessel. Surrender into our custody immediately.”

  “Vanov?” muttered Yehoshua. “I don’t remember any Vanov.”

  It took Lily a moment, but as the silence lengthened—the Boukephalos waiting for a reply—she suddenly recalled a short, heavyset man with too-small eyes. “Hoy,” she said in an undertone. “He’s the one who killed Senator Isaiah and threw Robbie’s body in the ocean.”

  “Killed who?” asked Pinto sharply, startling her because she had not thought he could hear so well, strapped into the pilot’s console. Mercifully, Finch did not repeat her comment to him.

  “We’re down forty percent on weapons,” said Nguyen from the bank. “At this rate we’ll lose either our engines or the power to do any damage.”

  “Cut weapons to minimum coverage. Finch, tell Jenny to get her troops in gear for possible boarding.”

  “Another incoming,” replied Finch.

  “Forlorn Hope. If you do not reply to this broadcast, we will be forced to fire on you. Who is in charge?”

  “Pinto, give us a course that will allow us to drift right under them without their being able to catch us. Mule, we need the nearest window. We’re going to bluff and run. Finch, relay the message to the Boukephalos saying that we are prepared to surrender and asking for terms. Make it as long-winded as possible.” She tapped the com for Engineering. “Blue. We’re leaving the system. How much power do we have?”

  “But Captain”—Blue’s voice came back sounding nervous as well as tinny—“by my calculations we can only accommodate two vectors safely. And a third—I wouldn’t risk it.”

  “Get us one now, Blue.” She tapped off. “Pinto, Mule. Can you get us a vector that tight and unexpected? If it comes to a real chase, we can’t outrun them.” She fingered the com again, reaching her cabin. “Bach, I need you on the bridge.” Flicked it over even before hearing the robot’s whistled assent.

  “I’ve got their conditions,” said Finch. “Surrender of the vessel. The following persons to be taken into custody by Comrade Vanov: Lily Heredes, the physician Hawk, Eugenie Keos Amharat and her biological son Gregori, and Quincina Aliasing Feng. All other mutineers to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Eugenie? Is that Jenny? And Feng? Isn’t Senator Feng the praetor of the Senate?”

  “Finch.”

  He stopped talking.

  “Any other condition?”

  “Weren’t those enough?” he asked testily.

  “Captain,” broke in Yehoshua, “I have a detach from the Boukephalos. A large shuttle, I believe.”

  “Course?”

  “Looks like it’s headed this way. I can’t estimate intercept time yet. It’s broadcasting on a scrambled code in our direction.”

  “If they fire on us, it’ll be from the Boukephalos. And I don’t believe they’d risk losing the Hope by breaching it. Keep monitoring them, Yehoshua.” Lily studied the screen on her console arm. “Do we have a vector yet?”

  “Two hours to the closest window,” hissed the Mule, “but Station Omega is refusing us coordinates.”

  The bridge door swept aside and Bach floated in, singing a three-note query.

  “Can you make do with Bach?”

  The Mule glanced at her. Its crest raised, just enough that she thought it found the challenge amusing. “I can guarantee nothing.”

  “I can guarantee that Comrade Vanov is not a man we want to surrender to.” Lily whistled a quick command to Bach, and the robot sped over to plug into the navigation console.

  “Without Forsaken Station’s coordinates, the risk to vector is great. Surrender is sometimes preferable to death.”

  “In this case,” replied Lily, grim, “for most of us, I suspect surrender is death. I’ll take the vector.”

  “Ah.” The exclamation slipped smoothly from the Mule. It turned back to the console and began to calculate, Bach singing softly next to it.

  Gregori had found a corner in Engineering where Blue would not stumble across him. Paisley knew he was there, of course, but Paisley understood him. And the technician who had stayed on after the mutiny was a quiet and dutiful worker, not one to question the movements of the ranking mercenary Commander’s only son.

  So the boy watched them at the great consoles that controlled the Hope’s engines. He didn’t like Blue much, but he respected Blue’s ability to understand engines. It seemed to him little short of miraculous, considering Blue was so young and so ill-tempered and touchy. He especially disliked the way Blue treated Paisley: with a contempt tempered only by the fact that he had no one with which to replace her. Outside of Engineering, of course, Blue merely ignored her, being smart enough to realize that more public derision would not be well received by the captain. As far as Gregori knew, Paisley had never complained. Her ability to brush off Blue’s scorn he found more miraculous than Blue’s genius for engines.

  “What are you doing here?” Blue’s harsh voice startled the boy out of his reverie. “We’ve got an emergency. Now get out!”

  Gregori got. Paisley cast him a brief, taut smile as he scuttled past her toward the door, but it was all she had time for before Blue appeared, scolding her as well.

  The door sighed shut behind Gregori, cutting off Blue’s words, and left him in the hush of iron deck corridors. It was especially silent down here, because virtually no one except the Engineering techs, and the occasional mercenary patrolling the shuttle bays, ever came down this far. Even the ghosts, who seemed to Gregori to haunt the ship’s corridors, were scarce here, finding more to occupy, and recall, higher up.

  When he saw a figure slip hurriedly past a far intersection of corridor, he thought at first it might be one of the ghosts. After all, Hawk knew about them as well, so it could not be entirely his imagination. They were like faint presences, not seen so much as felt, and a few of the stronger ones he had given names to: Happy, who lived mostly in Medical; Fearful, whose path disappeared frequently into the Green Room, where Gregori was not inclined to follow; and Grumpy, who Gregori quite liked because he seemed to leave a trail of laughter behind him.

  But he had never actually seen one before, so he padded quietly after it, careful to stay unobtrusive.

  It led him to the bay left empty by the forced departure of Machiko and crew on one of the shuttles. It wasn’t until the figure paused outside the door to the control overlook, looking almost comically furtive before it opened the door and vanished inside, that Gregori realized who he was following.

  Under any other circumstances, he would have been more cautious, but he simply walked boldly in behind her.

  “Lia,” he asked as he came through the door, “what are you doing?”

  She gasped and spun around, but by then it was obvious: the great hold doors were parting to reveal the airless black of space and one shuttle, brilliant in the sun’s reflected light, poised to enter. The light on com began to blink a furious red, but Lia ignored it.

  “But who’s that?” Gregori asked. “Blue said we had an emergency. Have they come to help us?”

  Lia did not answer. Instead, she began madly tapping override commands into the console, and even manually locked the overlook door that led into the corridor. Then she extended the hatchway that would attach to the shuttle, which had angled precisely in and settled on the hangar pad.

  Intrigued, Gregori reached out and tapped the ship’s com.

  “—who the hell is down there?” came the captain’s voice, tig
ht and angry.

  “We have all entrances covered, and have manually locked all cargo doors from the outside. But the overlook is sealed. I am concentrating my people there.”

  “But Lia,” said Gregori, “that’s Momma out there. Shouldn’t we let her in?”

  “No.” It was all she would say, and delivered in such a cold voice, so uncharacteristic of Lia, that he did not care to argue. The set, frightened, and yet resolute look on her face scared him. He retreated to a corner to wait her out. She could not possibly remain so utterly changed forever.

  She shut off the com and linked up the hatchway. Within moments troops emerged, too many even to all stand in the overlook. One stripped off his face gear. He had tiny eyes in a round face, and his expression terrified Gregori.

  “Is this your way of betraying us?” he snapped at Aliasing.

  She shrank before him, looking even more unsure of herself and yet still determined.

  “No, Comrade Vanov,” she said, so quiet Gregori could barely make out her voice. “I would never betray Jehane.”

  The way she said the name had a flavor, a passion, that confused the boy, because he had never heard her speak so ardently about, or to, anyone, not even his mother.

  “Well, we’ve been monitoring ship’s com,” replied Comrade Vanov, mocking her, “and there’s a tidy selection of mercenaries outside that door, nicely set up, I’m sure, to rip us to pieces as we come through.”

  “Who’s this?” asked one of the other soldiers, a woman with a mild face.

  Both Vanov and Lia swung to stare at Gregori.

  “Who is it?” barked Vanov. His interest petrified Gregori.

  Lia began to speak, stopped, wrung her hands and turned away. “It’s Jenny’s boy,” she whispered.

  “Good work,” said Vanov, not making it much of a compliment. With abrupt speed, he reached out and grabbed Gregori and yanked him in tight against his uniform. Drawing his pistol, he pressed the muzzle against the boy’s temple.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “They won’t fire on us if we have hostages. Trey.” He nodded at the woman who had first noticed Gregori. “Take the woman.”

  “Vanov,” protested Trey. “You can’t put a child at risk like that. What if they shoot him?”

  “Are you disputing my command?” His tone was harsh and challenging.

  “No, comrade. Of course not.”

  “You said he wouldn’t be hurt!” exclaimed Lia.

  “I think it unlikely anyone will fire on him,” replied Vanov. “I’m only doing this to make sure there’s as little bloodshed as possible. Surely you understand?”

  Lia looked uncertain. Comrade Trey looked skeptical.

  “Very well,” snapped Vanov, impatient with this delay. “Form in order. We’re going out. Disarm and detain their mercenaries, sweep for crew, kill if you have to, and merge on the bridge. Is that clear?”

  Everyone nodded. Vanov waited an extra moment, eyes tight on Comrade Trey.

  “Yes, comrade,” she replied, expressionless.

  Gregori was too shocked, and too horrified by Lia’s betrayal and the hard circle of the pistol pressed against his hair, to fight or even to ask why.

  Hawk understood that things had gone quite bad when Jenny came over com to say that she would retreat without firing because the boarding party had somehow managed to get Aliasing and Gregori as hostages. Her normally imperturbable voice held a definite tremor.

  Hawk wondered for a moment if Lily was going to order Jenny to fire anyway, but the captain only made the cryptic reply: “Lock coordinates to Engineering.”

  Securing all patients, he then went into the lab and locked away his supplies of the Hierakas Formula. And because he always, at any place he spent more than an hour’s time in, identified a bolt hole, he hid himself there and waited. Touched briefly each of the weapons he had stored there. All were operational.

  He scented Jenny’s mercenaries first. They smelled scared and confused as they retreated higher and higher up. Jenny he did not detect.

  Then the first wave of Jehane’s troops, herding those few of the crew who had been left unarmed: Blue and the tech from Engineering, and UnaDia Wei from the Main Computer banks. Soon enough they passed through Medical and collected Flower.

  It was easy enough to wait them out and then follow after they’d left, thus giving Lily the backup she’d need. Except that they held a wild card that he did not expect. Eight came in, Lia with them.

  “Then he must be here still,” she was saying to a stocky man whom Hawk quickly identified as Kuan-yin’s crony from the Boukephalos. “If he wasn’t in the captain’s cabin. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Gregori once said he had a hiding place here.”

  “Spread out and give yourselves cover,” ordered Vanov to his soldiers. “We’ll just wait him out.”

  Hawk did not bother to dwell over how Gregori had come to discover the bolt hole. The boy knew the ship very well. He did calculate the amount of damage he could do, but Vanov’s soldiers were well trained enough to cover each other as well as the room, and Vanov left with Aliasing before he could make a choice.

  So he stowed the weapons farther back and surrendered himself. As they marched him up to gold deck, and the bridge, he wondered what Gwyn would have done in the same situation. But Gwyn had been the best, and whatever Hawk’s skills as a saboteur and terrorist, which were not inconsiderable, his real expertise had always lain in healing.

  It was no relief to discover, on reaching gold deck, that they could have used Gwyn. Whether through the shock of Lia’s betrayal, or the use of hostages, or because of his sheer ruthless efficiency, Comrade Vanov had taken control of the bridge. As Hawk was herded in, he was disposing of the prisoners.

  “All the tattoos in one detention block. Just seal them in for now. But leave the ones in Engineering and in Computer until we get replacement crew. The two Engineering techs, the computer tech—we’ll need them later.”

  Hawk smelled blood, but he had to look around to find Jenny prostrate on the floor by the nav console. She had blood on her face, and one of her arms was lying at a bad angle. She stirred, but did not moan; she was still conscious. On the opposite side of the bridge, Aliasing stared in horror. Gregori, held by a rough-looking trooper, looked paralyzed by his mother’s injury.

  The bridge cleared somewhat as the people named by Vanov and their guards left, revealing Lily standing isolated by the captain’s console, a soldier on either side of her. She looked unhurt. Her expression, when she saw Hawk, did not change: it was emotionless now.

  “I am a doctor,” said Hawk easily into the silence left by the departure of the others. “May I see to the wounded woman?”

  “No,” said Vanov. “I don’t waste medical help on people whom I have orders to kill.”

  Lia gasped, audibly, and went white. She staggered slightly, catching herself on the back of the chair Yehoshua was sitting in. A soldier moved to grab her arm.

  “But you said”—she began, her voice as much breath as vibration—“No one was to be hurt. He promised me.” By the tone of her voice, there could be no doubt that he was Alexander Jehane.

  Vanov seemed not to have heard her. He looked over the bridge crew—Yehoshua, Nguyen, Finch, Pinto, the Mule, and Bach—with a precise eye, as if measuring what to do with them.

  “Comrade Trey,” he ordered. “Get on comm and call the Boukephalos in. I want a bridge crew waiting to replace these as soon as they can board.”

  Comrade Trey moved to comm. Finch, glancing up at her set face and then at the score or so of soldiers still crowding the bridge, moved aside to let her at the controls.

  Lily had not moved, except to turn her head enough to see the Mule. It sat quite still at the nav console, one hand covering the other; Bach hovered beside it just below the level of the counter, his curve pressed up against the siding.

  It seemed to Hawk some message passed between the two that he could not read. The Mule hissed slightly. Pinto, hidden by the s
tillstrap, stared straight ahead. If he was watching the numbers click across the chin harness of the strap, it was not apparent.

  Vanov, too, glanced that way. “Turn the nav console off,” he ordered. The soldier stationed by navigation reached out and flipped the auto nav to manual.

  Lily was still looking at the Mule. Her expression did not change. The Mule’s crest rose and fell, like a rustling, and it removed its hands from the console and rested them as if resigned on Bach’s keypad.

  Jenny stirred again. Her breathing was ragged but even. Vanov, secure now, glared at the mercenary.

  “Kill her first, then the boy,” he ordered, cool now that he was totally in control.

  On Pinto’s chin strap, red numbers still clicked across the tiny screen.

  “Comrade!” protested Trey, standing up from the comm-station. “I wasn’t informed of these orders. Killing children is not what I became a Jehanist for.”

  “Are you challenging me, comrade?” Vanov demanded, his voice as hard as his eyes. “You know the punishment for insubordination.”

  “That child is not old enough to have been party to this mutiny. He can’t be held accountable.”

  Lia broke free of the soldier who had been grasping her arm. “But you said no one would be hurt!” she cried, flinging herself at Vanov. “You lied to me!”

  Vanov slapped her full in the face. She staggered, and Vanov regarded her with cool disdain. “Kill her as well,” he said calmly.

  “But you can’t—” The extent of his betrayal shocked her into silence for a moment. She held one hand against the reddening patch where he had hit her. “You must know I got a message from Jehane—that he would send someone to bring me to him. You can’t defy Jehane’s orders.”

  Vanov shrugged, unconcerned. “It might be true that he did mean to send someone for you. You’re pretty enough. But my orders didn’t come from Jehane.” It was said so impassively that it clearly was true.

  Lia slumped forward, defeated by his dispassion, and began to cry. “Jenny,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”