Price of Ransom

by Kate Elliott

  The comment left an uncomfortable silence in the room. Yehoshua broke in briskly, more out of compassion for Lily’s pain than to cover his own discomfort.

  “This all presupposes that we can convince the Boukephalos to retreat without engaging us, get supplies at Forsaken, and get across uncharted vector space to your League. On the other hand, Pinto and the Mule ran that last damn vector on manual.” He ran a hand through his silvering hair. “I’m getting too old for this.” Then laughed, exchanging looks with Flower. “Unless this Formula is true, in which case I won’t be getting older for a while yet.”

  “You don’t believe it?” Lily asked, a little defensive, perhaps.

  “Do you? Really?”

  For the first time, he had the relief of seeing the barest smile crack her grim facade. “No, not really,” she admitted. “But I expect we’ll get used to the idea eventually.” She turned and strode with abrupt energy to the door. Yehoshua and Flower both rose. “I want bridge and Engineering back on as soon as Rainbow is—finished. We don’t have any time to waste.” She paused. “Then meet me in detention. I want to ask Comrade Trey one question before we put her on the shuttle. Flower, return to Medical.”

  “Yes, min.”

  “What question?” Yehoshua asked.

  “I want to know what Kyosti meant when he said that she smelled of Robbie.”

  She left, and he followed Flower out behind her. Got a verbal estimate from Rainbow of the time until the bridge was usable again—he did not care to check for himself. Put all personnel on ready and, curious now, made his way down to detention.

  The captain was waiting for him outside the cell that held Comrade Trey. They observed her through the one-way for a few minutes. She sat on the edge of the bunk, shoulders slumped, hands covering her face. She breathed; otherwise, she did not move.

  Her head jerked up as the door opened. Her eyes had the white edge of fear, and she caught at the thin blanket as if to shield herself with it. Then, registering her two visitors, her face relaxed slightly, but she remained tense.

  “I just have one question to ask you,” said Lily quietly. “Then you’ll be escorted to the shuttle and transferred back to the Boukephalos with the others.”

  “You’re just going to let us go?” asked Trey, not believing it. She had a broad face, slightly flat with dusky skin; handsome in its own way partly because of the mildness that even now showed through her agitation. “The Boukephalos has orders to bring you in.”

  “Your Commander is dead. What will your First Officer do?”

  “I don’t know,” Trey admitted. “I’m nominal First. This expedition was put together very hastily, and people from several different ships were pulled in to cover it.”

  “You didn’t know Comrade Vanov before?”

  “No,” Trey seemed about to say something more, perhaps about Vanov, and then thought better of it.

  “Is Dr. Prachenduriyang still on board?” Lily asked.

  “Prachen …? The only doctor on board I know of is Tzu.”

  Lily glanced at Yehoshua, as if the look shared information that he ought to know. “I suppose that settles it. The casualties will stay with us.”

  “If I may,” said Yehoshua. Lily nodded. “I’d like to know why Comrade Trey is being so very forthcoming. Under the circumstances.”

  “Comrade Trey,” said that woman with a mild hint of irony, “is appalled at the actions of her former Commander and is not entirely sure she wants to return to the Boukephalos. If this is what Jehane’s revolution has come to—killing children—I want no part of it.”

  “Did you know Robert Malcolm?” Lily asked abruptly.

  Trey’s face changed. Yehoshua recognized her expression. It wasn’t hard. A memory mixed of sorrow and joy: she had loved him, once, or loved him still. How the sorrow fit in he could not guess.

  “You’re Maitreyi, aren’t you?” said Lily, and she unexpectedly took two steps forward and knelt before Trey. “He loved you.”

  Trey stared at Lily as if Lily’s soul had just been illuminated before her. “You knew him,” she breathed. She put out her hands and Lily took them in hers, an act of such unconscious sisterhood that it made Yehoshua feel awkward and intrusive.

  “Who are you talking about?” he asked, and was embarrassed to hear his own voice sound so grating.

  “Robert Malcolm,” Lily said, not looking at him. “Robbie.” When he still did not react, she finished, “Pero.”

  “Oh.” It was all he could manage to say, knowing that it was Pero’s death—his murder—that had brought them this far.

  “After the Finegal Revolt on Veritas,” said Trey, oblivious to anything but Lily’s regard, “when I had to turn him in, when he tried to escape from the hospital, after that they shipped my unit off to the next assignment, I couldn’t forget him. Or the things he had said. And I couldn’t forgive myself for stopping his escape.”

  “He forgave you,” Lily murmured. “No, there was no forgiveness in it. He simply never blamed you for doing your duty. He admired you for it.”

  Trey shook her head slightly, either not believing or believing too much. “I finally deserted. I joined Jehane and learned ships, because that was where they needed people then. When we came to Arcadia at last I thought, I’ll find him again. I knew he had taken the name Pero. I thought it wouldn’t be hard to find him, to show him that I finally understood, about the Finegal Revolt, about Jehane’s revolution. And then he was dead.” Clearly she was not a person who cried easily. Pain invested her expression, her entire body, but she only hesitated a moment before she went on. “I volunteered to come out on the Boukephalos. Vanov as good as said that the people they were going after were the ones responsible for Robbie’s death. But I began to distrust Vanov. And after this”—she had not ceased looking at Lily—“I think he must have been lying, wasn’t he?”

  The line of Lily’s mouth quirked up into a rueful smile.

  “Not entirely. I was responsible for his death, because of something I told him. But it was Jehane who had him killed.”

  This revelation proved too much for Trey. She broke her hold on Lily’s hands and covered her face again. “Jehane,” she murmured. “After everything Pero had done for him. How can I believe that?”

  Lily looked up at Yehoshua. Understanding the signal quite well, he nodded to her and left the two women alone. Waited outside for perhaps five minutes, watching Lily’s lips move as she began her explanation, Trey’s muted responses, and the shivering of her shoulders as each piece of Jehane’s betrayal of Pero fell into place. But he began to feel like a voyeur, so he left.

  He checked in with Rainbow again. Cleanup was progressing. Bach was taking systems through their paces, and evidently both the Mule and Pinto had already reported to the bridge and were beginning their calculations. Yehoshua still did not feel like making a personal inspection.

  Instead, he wandered to the mess. Its lights were dimmed down so far that one could scarcely make out the two occupants, one seated on the lap of the other at the table in the farthest, dimmest corner.

  He entered cautiously.

  Jenny sat in a posture so utterly uncharacteristic of her—so despondent, so drained of life—that for a moment he wondered if he had mistaken her. But the child huddled on her lap could be no one but Gregori. The boy had disposed himself both carefully, not touching his mother’s broken arm, and with the absolute urgency of a child needing comfort. His face was pressed against Jenny’s breast, his legs curled up completely on her lap. She had her good arm clasped tight around him. But her gaze was focused on the wall, seeing, and not seeing.

  She heard his footsteps and turned her head just enough to see him. A flare of hope—but it died abruptly as she recognized who it was.

  He approached and halted at the other end of the table.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” he asked, feeling like an idiot as he said it.

  “She went,” Jenny said, not a question.

&nbs
p; He bowed his head. “Yes.” Hesitated. “I’m sorry.” Wished immediately that he hadn’t said it.

  She did not reply.

  A soft footfall sounded at the mess entrance. Both Jenny and Yehoshua looked up, she with awful hope, he with fear that turned to guilty relief when he saw the captain walk across to them.

  Lily’s face was grave. She nodded first at Yehoshua. “Trey is joining our crew. As acting Second Officer, for the time being. Can you show her around?”

  “Are you sure—?” he began, shocked at this sudden change of sides.

  “Quite sure.”

  “But we aren’t free of the Boukephalos yet. This could be a ploy on her part.”

  “Yehoshua. I know the risks. She isn’t one anymore. We both loved Robbie, in different ways. She’ll stand by us.”

  He bowed his head again, although this time it was a gesture of acquiescence, and tactfully retreated to the entrance. But he paused to look back.

  Lily was just standing, watching Jenny. He could not make out her expression in the dimness, but he heard her say, low: “Jenny.”

  Just that, and Jenny raised her head and shifted in her chair.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked. A simple enough question, but her voice caught and choked on the words and to Yehoshua’s horror Jenny—brave, mercenary Jenny—began to cry. He took two involuntary steps toward them, but Lily had already knelt to hug both Jenny and the silent Gregori, enclosing them as well as she could, comforting them with what comfort she had to give.

  And Yehoshua knew that he was not only unneeded, but out of place. Yet still, the thought that came into his mind as he left, quiet as he could, was both bitter and ironic: what quality did men like Hawk and Pero and Jehane have, to instill such love and loyalty in women? It was no wonder he and Alsayid had made such a good team, because clearly his problem was not that he was getting old—he was not even forty yet, after all—but that he was dull.

  No one chased Gregori off the bridge when they came into Forsaken system a second time, so he sat quietly on the floor next to the elevator. His mother had armed up again, preparing for battle, but Gregori preferred to stay away from the lowest deck, the too-recent scene of Lia’s betrayal. The others had seemed reluctant to step back onto the bridge, but after a first, nervous glance, the place seemed to Gregori to look exactly as it always had. Maybe some of the consoles gleamed more than usual. The other memory was already fading, like a nightmare.

  Finch hailed the Boukephalos. The captain, in the tersest voice Gregori had ever heard her use, outlined the situation to the Boukephalos’s nervous Second Officer in words satisfying for their brevity and coolness: something on the lines of, “Leave quietly, or we’ll blow you up.” The invading shuttle was released from the Hope’s hold, taking Aliasing with it, and the Boukephalos—its new Commander evidently unwilling to take on the ship that had vanished so abruptly and unexpectedly and then returned having disposed of a soldier as rabid as Vanov—left. Quietly.

  Comm flooded with signals from Stations Alpha and Omega, and from the remains of Forsaken’s old Central military command from planetside. The two military ships had been hulled by the Boukephalos on her arrival. Those of their crew who had escaped had shuttled down to the old command base near Forsaken’s largest city. The Forlorn Hope had saved them: Did her captain mean to lead the fight to restore Central against the upstart Jehane?

  The captain’s announcement of her twin goals—to distribute the Hierakas Formula and then leave to attempt to cross the old road back—brought silence to comm. Then a brief message apologizing for the delay. And finally, after some fifteen minutes, an offer to provide whatever the honorable captain needed so that she could leave as soon as she saw fit.

  “In other words,” said Yehoshua from scan, grinning, “they think we’re crazy, and they want us out of here before we can change our minds about just what crazy thing it is we’re going to do next.”

  “But after all,” hissed the Mule with surprising sympathy, “there are only two charted vectors out from Forsaken, so they live on the edge of known space every moment. Of all people, they would be most superstitious.”

  The captain relayed the ship’s needs to Station Alpha and also a distribution schedule for the Formula. Fifteen of the seventeen conscious patients in Medical asked to remain at Forsaken and were duly ferried across with the shipment of the Formula base. None of the active crew left.

  It took two days to resupply. The captain supervised, from shipboard, the equitable distribution of the Formula on Forsaken and its Stations, as well as the portion set aside to be passed on to the other nearby systems and stations.

  Every four hours she took Flower with her to check on Hawk’s condition. Gregori asked politely if he could go, too, and because he was underfoot anywhere else, especially because his mother worked long hours stowing the influx of goods, he was allowed to tag along. Hawk’s catatonia fascinated him. Hawk did not seem quite alive to Gregori, lying there so motionless and pale, and yet the tiny swell and fall of chest as he breathed marked him as not dead.

  The bustle of resupply ended abruptly. The bay released the last of Forsaken’s supply shuttles. Grappling lines from the bulk tanker receded. Stationmaster bid them a relieved farewell.

  The Forlorn Hope vectored twice on charted jumps, and after each window the captain went immediately to check again on Hawk. No one asked why. His condition did not change.

  Have Mercy Station welcomed them with surprise. Its population of pygmies and stranded Ridanis and a handful of contract personnel obviously saw little traffic at this hindermost shore on the edge of the ocean of uncharted space. The captain sent them a vial of Formula—enough to cover their population with some to spare—as a final gift.

  And then the Forlorn Hope left the last outpost of Reft space and nosed out into the unknown, onto Paisley’s Haunted Way. Wandering the corridors of the Forlorn Hope, Gregori caught snatches of song from the Ridanis. They all seemed to be singing from the same work, holding on to it as if it was some kind of shield, or talisman. Its chorus whispered through the corridors in a muted undertone:

  Lost we are, belly down day

  Through ya mountains winds ya way.

  Everyone seemed too busy to pay any attention to the child left solitary by their business. And yet they journeyed slowly, and with great caution. Each window was preceded and followed by intense periods of discussion, arguments over what constituted landmarks and which old and half-forgotten traditions about the way back were to be trusted. The ship drifted in orbit in each new system—all empty of beacons or stations or any sign of previous traffic—for long slack periods while new courses were charted, discarded, and recalculated.

  The time strung itself out until Gregori felt that they would wander the road forever. Still, his mother went about her duties as if there was not enough time to do all she had to do, or as if she made sure there was not. Paisley rarely emerged out of Engineering. Two convalescing patients, relatively mobile, took over Aliasing’s domain in the galley, making it a different place. People still gathered there, for breaks, but not people Gregori was comfortable with. Now and then Yehoshua attempted to entertain him, but Yehoshua did not understand children, much less Gregori, and Gregori felt obliged to be polite but not to endure his company for long. He did not dislike Yehoshua, just found him dull.

  Only two things made the journey bearable. The first was his visits, four times a ship’s day, to the captain’s suite with Flower to look in on Hawk. As days turned into a week, and then two, the captain’s attendance slacked off until she only actually entered the suite twice a day, although she had to be there to open the door each time. She still slept in the outer room, on the couch.

  The second was the slow expansion of the awareness of the ghosts on the ship. He wondered if Paisley was right, if they were on the Haunted Way, but he did not have the nerve to ask her. Happy, Fearful, and Grumpy still strode their phantom paths, and now others, too faint to identif
y as more than presences before, came clearer to him. Spoiled, who hogged one particular chair in mess; Old, who walked very slowly, and seemed confused; and the Other Captain.

  Gregori was not sure how there could be another captain, but there was no doubt who she was. She haunted the captain’s suite, and the bridge, and one lab in particular on silver deck. Gregori could not decide whether he liked her or not, because he felt that if she knew he was following her she would, unlike Lily, chase him off. But she didn’t notice because she was, of course, only a ghost.

  But she did inadvertently show him something else. He took to trailing her eidolon, because she knew the ship best and because, despite the fact he suspected she would have no tolerance for children tagging after her, he admired the feelings of competence and courage that he caught off of her.

  The more he concentrated on her, the clearer and stronger her presence seemed to him. And he discovered that she had a different code than the one Lily used to unlock the inner suite.

  When he tried it, it worked. He went in, cautious, but he was only alone with the still form of Hawk. He talked to him for a while. Nothing happened, except that the deadening, uncomfortable silence that seemed to him to permeate the room was lessened, muted by his voice.

  Later he asked Flower if Hawk could hear them.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Could be he can. There be no way of telling. I talk to ya patients as be in ya coma. I think it does ya good, for them to hear ya voice, though they may not understand ya words or even that I be talking to them.”

  So Gregori took to bringing in his com-screen and reading his lessons out loud to Hawk. Sneaking in, really. Flower’s visits were precisely timed, and the captain was too busy running an uncharted road, backtracking here and there, soothing her nervous crew and the superstitious Ridanis, to be a likely danger. Once he overstayed his time and had to hide in the closet while Flower did her usual check of vital signs and refilled the fluid bags.