Price of Ransom

by Kate Elliott

  Nun mögt ihr stolzen Feinde schrecken:

  Was könnt ihr mir für Furcht erwecken?

  Mein Schatz, mein Hort ist hier bei mir.

  Ihr mögt euch noch so grimmig stellen,

  Droht nur, mich ganz und gar zu fällen,

  Doch seht! mein Heiland wohnet hier.

  “Now may you proud foes be affrighted,

  What fear could you awake in me?

  My precious, my treasure is beside me here!

  You may appear as grim as may be,

  threaten to lay me low completely,

  but lo! my Saviour dwells here.”

  16 Bounty

  “THIS IS RANSOME.”

  Static snapped over comm.

  “Captain. This is Windsor.” Background noise muffled his voice. “I have Hawk. I’ll trade him for you. Land a shuttle on Discord by twenty-one hundred hours at these coordinates.” A pause, and then he spoke the numbers slowly, as if he were reading from a list. “Disembark alone. A one-for-one trade, Ransome. Don’t try anything.”

  “Listen, Windsor. Hawk is seriously ill. You’re jeopardizing—”

  “Captain, the link has been cut from their end. I got a quick trace, but it won’t be very accurate.”

  “Thank you, Finch.” Even meaning the words, she could not keep the hard edge of anger out of her voice. She had not sat down in the captain’s chair, but stood, two fingers still pressing down the “comm” button. Realizing, finally, the futility of this action, she lifted her hand. “What’s Discord?”

  The Mule answered. “The planet which shares the same orbital path as Concord. According to what files I’ve accessed, it is designated wilderness and recreation zone.”

  “The whole planet?”

  “Evidently.”

  “Finch, do you have a trace on that link yet?”

  “Yes. This is approximate, but it reads to the same coordinates as we were given.”

  “Thereby giving him plenty of time to move by the time we can get there. Yehoshua.” He had followed her up from Engineering and now he waited. “Prepare a shuttle. I’ll need you and Pinto, and Jenny. Choose another six for backup. No je’jiri. Armed. Trey on the bridge. Finch, stay on comm as much as you can. Take a break when you need to, but we need your expertise.”

  “Yes, Captain.” The substance of her praise, even in the clipped tone with which she delivered it, seemed to satisfy him.

  “Mule. When Dr. Farhad arrives, I’d like you to act as liaison. I trust to your judgment to explain the situation to her.”

  “As you wish, Captain,” the Mule hissed. Its crest lifted slightly, but subsided again. Pinto unstrapped himself from his chair.

  “But Captain, what if it’s a bluff?” Yehoshua began. “I’m not sure the wisest course is to—” Lily turned her gaze on him, scarcely aware of him except as an object which she had to move in order to reach her goal. He faltered, shook his head. “I’ll meet you at the shuttle.” He inclined his head, acknowledging her unspoken order, and left the bridge.

  “Now.” Having dismissed this obstacle, she shifted her attention to Trey. “You’ll be in charge of the bridge. Dr. Farhad is to be allowed on board. No one else. Not even if we’re delayed and an inquiry comes from Concord or Intelligence. I leave you the unenviable task of explaining this to Deucalion—to min Belsonn.”

  The Mule hissed its fluid laugh, and even Finch smiled, but Trey merely assented without any visible emotion. Lily whistled to Bach and left the bridge with the robot drifting at her back. She stopped in her suite.

  Bach. Access all information on the planet Discord. What you can get in, say, twenty minutes. Then meet me at the shuttle bay.

  Affirmative, patroness. If I may suggest?

  A two-note assent.

  Thou mayest well be served to take two shuttles, that which delivers thee to the appointed rendezvous, and a second that can serve as a second voice to thy plans, one unexpected by thine opponent.

  “Surely he’ll expect something like that.” The thought of Windsor made her cold with fury. She felt as if all her emotions had frozen, leaving her only a narrow beam of cognition from which to draw her choice of actions. “But I think you’re right.”

  Bach accepted this encomium with a muted trill, understanding, perhaps, the intensity of Lily’s passion. He plugged in to the wall terminal while she changed and fitted a pistol and rifle onto a light harness.

  Her stride, taking her through the ship down to iron deck, was deliberate and swift. Passing crew members, she had enough perception to know that they did not speak to her because of the entire expression of her face and body.

  But even her expression was not enough to deter some. Of course, Deucalion was waiting at the shuttle. Jenny had blocked the hatchway ramp with her own person. She was fitted out in full mercenary rig, looking dangerous and not a little fierce.

  “Guns?” Deucalion demanded as soon as he caught sight of Lily. “You can’t simply use—”

  Lily ignored him. “Jenny, tell Yehoshua I want the second shuttle as well. Put your people on it. You’re our backup.”

  “Backup!” Deucalion went on as Jenny, responding with a salute, disappeared down the hatchway. “Lily. May I remind you that you have a hearing tomorrow. You gave me your word that you would attend.”

  Now she turned on him, and in the face of her anger, even he stopped speaking. “So I will. But perhaps under slightly different circumstances.”

  “I thought you were adamant that you would not let the bounty hunter bring you in. I think your case in that matter was legitimate. You don’t want to appear as a criminal—”

  “The circumstances have changed. He just put a price on my bounty that I can’t refuse. He says he has Hawk. I’m turning myself in to him, in exchange.”

  “You’re not making sense. How can he have Hawk?”

  “He broke him out of Concord prison.”

  “Impossible.”

  “It may be. That’s why we’re going armed, and I’m taking a backup force with me. If it’s a bluff, he’ll pay for it.” She waited, expecting his reply and ready to deflect it off the shield she had constructed around herself, to protect herself from any stimulus that might tug at the edge of her focus. Then she realized that Deucalion was speechless. He merely gazed at her. The absurdity of his being unable to find words made her smile, a little.

  Finally, as her silence wound away into the throbbing hum of the shuttle’s engines at lowest power, he spoke. “You’ve been around je’jiri too long. I think you’ve absorbed a trace element of them into your blood. I wouldn’t want you on my trail, unless you were coming to help me.”

  The comment left her speechless.

  “Have you always been this way?”

  The truth of the statement hung like a physical presence in front of her. Her pursuit of the martial arts Heredes had taught her; her pursuit of Heredes himself, that had led, ultimately, to his death. Paisley on Harsh. Each expedition led for Jehane, even at the end, as she tried to save Robbie—Pero—from death. And the choice to leave the Reft and find League space.

  “Yes,” she said slowly, considering it. “I suppose I have.”

  Deucalion smiled slightly, shaking his head with a weak chuckle. “So Father finally did get a child who took after him. Once he took up on something, he wouldn’t let it go until he had finished. I’ll go with you.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Certainly I do, sister. You need a Concord representative to protect your interests and to make sure that this bounty hunter turns over his hostage. He’ll be prosecuted for that, you know—I can’t imagine why he did it, unless he hopes that no one will believe that Concord prison’s security could be breached. And anyway, the only way you can stop me from going is to use force.”

  “I don’t have time.” But she had to grin at the sound of her own annoyance. “You’re a damn sight stubborner than I am, Deucalion.”

  “That’s a trait I got from my mother.” He walked do
wn onto the hatchway.

  “Aren’t you going to take anything? Or change your clothes, even?”

  “Oh, no, dear sister. I’m not taking the chance that you’ll just leave me.”

  She laughed and let him precede her onto the shuttle.

  By the time Bach arrived, the second shuttle was staffed and ready to go. With Pinto at the controls and Lily at comm, it left only Yehoshua and Deucalion and Bach to the rest of the shuttle. Lily regarded Pinto with misgivings, unsure of how Kyosti might react to him and yet wondering if Pinto and Yehoshua would seem familiar enough to Kyosti to garner any recognition at all.

  “Once I’m gone, if he panics, you might have to restrain him until you can get him to secure rooms on the Hope,” she said, and no one had to ask her who she was talking about.

  The detach from the Hope went smoothly. The second shuttle followed them, and then curved off on a new course to come in toward the rendezvous point from an opposite, and presumably less conspicuous, direction. Lily’s sporadic and perfunctory replies on comm left the cabin swathed in uncomfortable silence.

  “Why Discord?” Yehoshua asked finally, wanting any distraction. “It seems a strange name for a planet next to a construct like Concord.”

  Deucalion smiled. “Heraclitus, I think. Opposites attract. Originally, when this system was chosen as Concord’s home, they meant to build it on the planet. It’s a class-A habitat. But they realized that disrupting its ecology to that extent would be a negation of all that Concord stands for. There was a lot of argument over it. Hence, Discord. Eventually it became a designated wilderness and park. The only permanent habitations are for the park rangers and the zoned resorts.”

  “So people can visit it?” Yehoshua shook his head. “There were never enough class-A planets in Reft space not to use them all for agriculture.”

  “No, Discord has been left as it is, but it serves a good recreational purpose as well. In the zoned areas people can holiday, do sports, hike, swim, observe; some even war game.”

  “They do what?”

  Deucalion shrugged. “It’s a kind of sport. It’s very safe. I’ve never done it myself, having had enough of the real thing in my youth.”

  “People play at”—Yehoshua coughed, deliberately obscuring his amazement—“Never mind. Are we landing in a—ah—zoned area or a—what did you call it?—wilderness area?”

  “As far as I can tell, a wilderness area. It makes sense, although it’s against the law. One is supposed to have a permit. But if this bounty hunter actually broke into Concord prison, I doubt if he’s concerned with as minor a breach of law as that.”

  Yehoshua, who could not help but agree, did not answer. In time, they came down through a bank of clouds to see a carpet of trees laid out in topographic detail beneath them. A lake broke the monotone of green along one horizon, but otherwise, aside from the occasional bald strip of meadow and several watercourses cutting their silvered way through the forest, the ranks of trees stretched unbroken out along all sides.

  “That’s it,” said Pinto. “That escarpment along that ridge—that clearing. I see no sign of another ship.” He looked at Lily as if expecting her to change her mind.

  “Land.” Lily tapped in a tight beam to the other shuttle but did not call on it. Bach winked blue lights in the seat behind her. Pinto shook his head slightly, but he brought the shuttle in smoothly, landing on a fairly level patch of ground as close to the center of the clearing as he could manage. The engine volume cut substantially as he lowered the engines to standby. There was silence in the cabin as the three men waited. Lily unstrapped herself, unstrapped Bach, and headed for the hatch.

  “Lower the ramp. Deucalion, don’t try to follow me. I’m going out alone.”

  “But—” All three men spoke at once. Lily paused at the hatch lock and stared each one down in turn. Deucalion took the longest, but he, too, did not attempt any further objection.

  Lily paused at the top of the ramp, Bach hovering behind her. The brush of air against her face, the high fence of trees about fifty meters from the shuttle, reminded her of her landing on Arcadia. She tried to remember how many planetfalls she had made in the intervening time; it had not been many. And she smiled, thinking how ironic it seemed that she had gone to so much trouble to escape the confines of Ransome House only to confine herself in the thin, constraining walls of a spaceship.

  Movement caught at her peripheral vision, and she turned her head in time to see one of the Ardakians fade back into the screen of forest. She walked down to the bottom of the ramp and waited.

  Wind brushed a stray lock of her hair across her eyes, obscuring her vision, and as she reached up to brush it away, two figures appeared at the edge of the trees. One was stocky, not much taller than her; she recognized Korey Windsor immediately. The other figure—tall, slender—stood with a posture unfamiliar to her. A moment later she realized that with that pale blue hair, faded out in the bright sunlight, it could only be Kyosti, who at any other time she would have recognized at a glance from twice the distance. With a sudden wrench of fear, she wondered if he still remembered her, or if the break from Concord’s prison had broken the tenuous link she had reforged with him. Without thinking, she took ten steps out away from the ship, caught herself, stopped, and waited again.

  Windsor moved, and Kyosti walked forward, Windsor a steady two paces behind him. They walked hallway into the gap between trees and shuttle, and halted. In the forest behind Lily could discern no sign of either Fred or Stanford.

  Bach, at her shoulder, sang softly.

  Herzliebster, was hast du verbrochen, Dass man ein solch scharf Urteil hat gesprochen?

  “Beloved, what has thou done wrong that they have pronounced so hard a sentence?”

  Lily reached up to lay a hand gently on his gleaming surface. “Don’t worry,” she replied quietly. “He doesn’t have me yet. Why do you think I brought you along?”

  Hast thou a plan, patroness?

  “No,” she admitted. “First, to get Kyosti back. If I’m the price for that, so be it.” She began to walk, to meet Windsor. Floating behind her Bach sang in muted tones, as if he were speaking to himself, or musing over some problem.

  Was wollt ihr mir geben? Ich will ihn euch verraten.

  “What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you?”

  Nearing them, Lily saw Kyosti tilt his head from side to side, scenting. Then, abruptly, she knew he had caught her scent by the way his attention—even if signaled only by the turn of his head—fastened onto her. Windsor stood beside him in the deceptively casual stance of a well-honed fighter. Lily forced herself not to look at Kyosti, to look only at Windsor. Closing, she was surprised to see that whatever signs of dissipation and weariness she had discerned before in him were completely gone now: it was not just his Ardakian companions who made him dangerous and effective. Seeing him now, she could not help for a moment but be reminded of Master Heredes. She halted three meters from him and allowed herself a glance at Kyosti.

  Kyosti’s gaze did not waver from her face. She could feel it remain on her even as she turned to regard Windsor.

  “I’m unarmed,” he said. He grinned. It made his face come alive. “I haven’t had this kind of challenge in a long, long time.”

  “Boredom can take its toll,” she replied. “How the Hells did you get him out of there?”

  “Trade secret. It helps to have a computer expert and an explosives expert to hand as well. Just like the old days.” He was still grinning, but no longer at her. “They’ve forgotten that there wasn’t a security line that we couldn’t breach.”

  “Who’s forgotten?”

  His expression sobered instantly. “It’s not important. Are you turning yourself in to me? No tricks?”

  “I’m unarmed. That’s the only guarantee I’ll give you. Until Hawk is free.”

  “And then—?”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  For a moment he merely gazed at her, trying to r
ead something, but he merely shook his head and took one step back from Kyosti. Spoke several sentences in the language of the je’jiri.

  Kyosti swiveled his head smoothly to regard Windsor with the characteristic unblinking and disconcerting je’jiri stare. His reply, clipped and precise, was short.

  Windsor shook his head again and answered, still in the alien language. His delivery did not have the precision of Kyosti’s, but it sounded fluent to Lily’s ears.

  “What are you saying?” she demanded.

  His reply was brusque. “Telling him he can go free.”

  “My shuttle—”

  “Not into your hands. Not into anyone’s hands. Free.”

  “You said you would trade him for me.”

  “Trade you for his freedom. There’s a difference.” The brilliant light of Discord’s sun illuminated harsh lines—not of age, but of old dissipation—on his face. “I won’t allow him to be forced back into that prison. I agree to let him go. Not to you.”

  “Not to anyone?” she echoed, sardonic now. “You have no honor at all, have you? You can’t even be trusted to hold a simple agreement.”

  “No honor among thieves.” His voice was bitter. “But there is loyalty. People forget that.”

  “I’d like to know what makes you think I’d let him go back to prison.”

  He shook his head. “Even if you meant not to, how could you stop it? Stop Concord from taking him in again?”

  “Once you let him go ‘free,’ how can you stop them?”

  “At least he’ll have a chance to get to The Pale.”

  Lily deliberately looked away from Windsor and directly at Kyosti. He returned her gaze intently, but neutrally.

  “Kyosti.” She spoke slowly and with careful enunciation, so that he would have no trouble understanding her. “The shuttle behind me carries three men. I trust them to take care of you. Will you go with them until such time as I can return to you?”

  “Yes,” he replied without hesitation.

  For a moment, she allowed herself to be diverted by Windsor’s expression: he look dumbfounded. Then, catching himself, he spoke swiftly and passionately to Hawk. Hawk’s reply was brief, punctuated by a shrug made alien by the set and movement of his shoulders, and he moved away from Windsor to align himself instead with Lily.