Price of Ransom

by Kate Elliott

  Windsor grinned. He still looked scruffy, but the color in his face was healthy and his smile, cheerfully sly.

  “Got a job,” Fred said. He grinned as well.

  Stanford detached his slate from his shoulder harness and set it down on the table. “You can see the specifications here.” He slid it forward so that the captain could examine it.

  She studied the screen for a moment and then shook her head. “What is this?”

  Windsor coughed. “After you left for Terra, secrets intact, that woman from Administration—the Sirin, Qaetana—hired us as consultants to reconfigure the security system at Concord prison.”

  “No.” The captain, and then Jenny, and then Yehoshua, started to laugh.

  “Do you mean to say,” demanded Yehoshua, “that they never found out who actually sprang Hawk?”

  “Don’t know,” confessed Fred. “We never asked. Pay was too good.”

  “And it was certainly not information that we would spontaneously reveal,” added Stanford primly.

  Several people broke out talking at once, and Gregori, who had been dislodged from his chair by their arrival, decided to reacquaint himself with the ship instead. He wandered out of the mess, nodding at the Mule and Pinto where they sat with their new pilot and navigational compatriots, at Rainbow with the brilliant Ridani contingent, at two of the children from his play group, and finally got out the door into blessed solitude.

  Only it was not quite solitude. Despite the many people crowded into the mess, as many were at duty stations, busy with the last preparations for casting off the next day. He dodged carts and crew on his way down to bronze level, where he fled into the comparative quiet of the remodeled je’jiri quarters.

  The Dai welcomed him with a brief nod, and he was allowed to sit in on a one-hour lesson in three-dimensional modeling with the children. After that, as he understood, he was no longer welcome to stay, since there were other needs that the je’jiri did not share with aliens, so he left and meandered along the corridors, aimless. He skirted the Green Room and took an elevator to silver deck, strolled the crew cabins, pausing now and again to read the unfamiliar names appended to the doors of each one. All were filled. Halted, hearing the captain’s voice through an open door.

  “You want to what?” She sounded incredulous.

  Finch’s voice, replying, was stiff, but it held an undercurrent of pleading in it. “I want your permission to attach myself to the expedition that is returning to Reft space. If that’s possible.”

  “You don’t need my permission, Finch. I’m just surprised that you want to go.”

  “I haven’t been that happy here. You know that.”

  “That’s true enough. I’m sorry that I haven’t had more time to spend with you …”

  “It’s nothing to do with you, Lily,” he said quickly. “I know I’ve been maybe a little hard to get along with, or haven’t tried to make friends like I could have.”

  “And you certainly have been hard on the Ridanis. Especially Paisley. You’ll be the only other one of us going back, Finch. I just hope you’ll be kinder to her than you have been. It’s not been easy for her to leave. Will you promise me that? Please?” Her voice was almost gentle.

  His silence stretched out so long that it was a confession in itself.

  “Damn my eyes,” murmured the captain. “No. Finch. She’s why you’re going back, isn’t she?” Gregori decided he had been wrong in thinking her incredulous before, because it was nothing to the astonishment in her voice now.

  “We all make mistakes,” Finch mumbled.

  Gregori felt a presence come up behind him, and he whirled, expecting to see a shadow, or a faint haze in the air. But it was only Paisley. She put a hand on his hair, a liberty he would have allowed no one else but his mother, and waited along with him. Neither of them could see inside Finch’s room.

  “If that’s going to be your attitude, Finch,” the captain snapped, “then I think you’d better not go.”

  “No,” he said fiercely. “You misunderstand me. I guess I deserved as much. I meant—we all make mistakes when we try to convince ourselves that we can’t”—he hesitated, and then plunged on—“that we can’t love someone who we think we ought to despise or hate, or fear, because of what they are. Not who they are. Yes, I’m going back because of Paisley. I thought I ought to try to make it up to her, the way I’ve treated her, and the other Ridanis, by helping her now. I only realized—when I found out she was leaving. That’s when I thought, how would I feel if I never saw her again.”

  There was a pause. “I do understand, Finch,” said Lily softly. “Only too well. But I think you ought to ask Paisley first.”

  Paisley drew her hand down off Gregori’s hand and slipped past him, disappearing inside the room. There was a longer silence. Then, Paisley’s voice, softer even than the captain’s. “I don’t want ya man, Finch, if that be what you’re meaning. I mean to bring ya Ridanis to ya green grass land, and if you will help me—well then, you’ll be beside me, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Finch, so muffled that his assent was barely audible.

  A moment later the captain emerged out into the corridor, looking thoughtful. “Well, hello, Gregori,” she said, seeing him. “Looking for someone?”

  “No.” He waited, expectant.

  “Would you like to come with me to Medical?”

  He nodded eagerly and followed along with her, acknowledging the people they passed with an air of importance secured him by the captain’s company. She did not speak, and when they entered Medical she stopped inside the door and simply watched for a long while.

  Flower was putting the scan on one of the new beds through its paces, and she looked up and nodded, seeing the captain. The other physician was half-hidden in one of the isolation rooms, on her hands and knees as she fiddled with the controls under a console. But it was Hawk that the captain watched.

  First his form standing at a counter in the lab: he opened each drawer and took out each tool, each piece of equipment, handled it, smelled it, and set it back in precise order. Then he moved to the next counter and repeated the procedure. Gregori could tell by the way his posture had changed when they had come in that Hawk knew that the captain was there, but what he was doing engaged his attention more surely, at this moment, than she did.

  The captain was smiling, equal parts mixed of sadness and relief and pleasure. Finally, Hawk ventured out onto the main ward and he crossed slowly to them, touching each bed as he passed, pausing at each scan and running his fingers across it, as if he could feel in the grain of its plass and metal exterior the health of its mechanisms inside. To Gregori, he still looked more je’jiri than human, so much so that Gregori would have said, had he not been told by his mother what had happened, that this was a different person entirely.

  Except when Hawk glanced up at the captain at last, coming close enough that they could see clearly into each other’s faces. Then he was Hawk, in his eyes, at least. He stopped in front of the captain and turned his head to look at Flower, at the other physician, at Gregori, and back at Lily.

  He said something in je’jirin first, then consciously stopped himself and concentrated. He began to speak, gave up, and shut his eyes. Lily waited, patient. Flower drifted into the lab, leaving them in peace. Hawk opened his eyes suddenly. “‘When I count,’” he said in the clipped-accent Standard that was similar to the Dai’s, “‘there are only you and I together, But when I look ahead up the white road, There is always another one walking beside you.’”

  “That’s you, Kyosti,” said the captain quietly. “Both of you are still here. You just have to put them together.”

  Hawk’s expression did not change, but he seemed to be considering her words as if they might possibly have made sense to him. The captain sighed, but she did not give up. “Show me the new equipment,” she said.

  Now he clearly understood her, and with the muted voice that Gregori recognized as je’jiri enthusiasm, he led the
m on a tour of Medical’s refit. He had not lost any of his facility as a doctor, whatever else he had suffered. When, after a while, the door to Medical shunted aside and Dr. Farhad joined them, Gregori slipped out and roamed further on and up, finding himself at last on the bridge.

  Trey and a number of unfamiliar faces were on duty, running the ship through her final checks. He curled up in the one out-of-the-way corner and, lulled by the smooth flow of their voices counting off stats and measures, he fell asleep.

  Woke. A little disoriented at first, groping up, because someone had thrown a blanket over him but otherwise let him lie. Still there were voices, almost twin to the ones he had fallen asleep to, but more of these were familiar.

  “We have clearance from traffic control,” said Trey.

  “Rolling back hold two,” said Yehoshua. “I have a secure on hatch one. Hatch two secured. Hatch three secured.”

  “I have received preliminary vector coordinates,” hissed the Mule.

  “Hatch four secured. Hold one and hold three are level.”

  Gregori sat up. From his vantage point, he could see the captain’s profile clearly. Bach hovered at her elbow, his surface gleaming in the hard light of the bridge.

  Com crackled. “All hands secured,” said Jenny over the click and pop of the speaker.

  “Hatch five secured,” said Yehoshua. “All hatches and holds are worthy, Captain.”

  Lily keyed in to her console. “Traffic control, this is Captain Ransome of the Forlorn Hope. We are ready to detach.”

  “Detach acknowledged,” responded the disembodied voice of traffic control. “Good luck, Hope.”

  “Thank you,” said the captain, and she smiled. “Pinto?”

  “Detach commenced,” said Pinto. He adjusted the stillstrap a final time and looked over at the Mule. The Mule looked back, and its crest lifted as it hissed in approval.

  “Did I ever tell you the story,” began Yehoshua to the bridge at large, “about how my grand-pap got caught inside a mining remote that was pulled into a window by the wake of a big military cruiser?”

  “Why, no,” replied the captain solemnly, “I don’t think we’ve heard that one, Yehoshua.”

  The ship jarred slightly. “Detach accomplished,” said Pinto. “We are free.”

  The door to the bridge slipped aside and Hawk appeared. He took two steps onto the bridge and halted. Lily turned, saw him, and nodded. He came up to stand just behind her, hand resting on the back of her chair.

  “Commence countdown to window,” the captain ordered.

  “Three forty seven,” said the Mule. “Three forty eight. Homing at fourteen ought three two seven degrees.”

  “Check,” said Pinto.

  Bach began to sing:

  Ich will dich mit Fleiss bewahren,

  Ich will dir

  Leben hier,

  Dir will ich abfahren.

  Mit dir will ich endlich schweben

  Voller Freud

  Ohne Zeit

  Dort im andern Leben.

  “I will keep Thee diligently in my mind,

  I will live for Thee here,

  I will depart with Thee hence.

  With Thee will I soar at last,

  filled with joy

  time without end,

  there in the other life.”

  On the screen above, the vast superstructure of Concord receded and dropped out of view as they turned, appearing again on the back screen while the front filled with the measureless shore of stars.

  Acknowledgments

  I COULD NOT HAVE completed this book without the support of many people, some of whom are listed below. Many many thanks are due them.

  To Betsy Mitchell and Team Spectra, for their patience and their belief that I would actually finish book three:

  To my parents, Gerald and Sigrid Rasmussen, for all the hours they invested, and to my siblings, for entertaining me on the phone and remaining positive:

  To my in-laws, Ruth and Milt Silverstein, for like reasons:

  To Brandon and Dianne, and Kit and Howard, for bringing us dinner:

  To Dr. Karen Urbani, for taking such good care of the boys:

  To Carol Wolf, for comments and typing and all-around egging me on:

  To Raven Gildea, Katharine Kerr, Jane Butler, Judith Tarr, and the Whensday People—Teresa, Ellen, Dani, Joy, Kevin, Mike, Bob, Kim, Dean, Delores, and Beth—for valuable feedback, without which it would not have been nearly so coherent:

  And finally, to my husband, Jay, who bore up pretty well, infant twins, two-year-old, and all.

  About the Author

  Kate Elliott has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe that she is either a little crazy or that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive. Her most recent series is the Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, and Cold Steel), an Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-nineteenth-century Regency ice-punk mashup with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendants of troodons, and revolution. Her previous works include the Crossroads trilogy (starting with Spirit Gate), the Crown of Stars septology (starting with King’s Dragon), the Novels of the Jaran, the Highroad Trilogy, and the novel The Labyrinth Gate, originally published under the name Alis A. Rasmussen.

  She likes to play sports more than she likes to watch them; right now, her sport of choice is outrigger canoe paddling. Her spouse has a much more interesting job than she does, with the added benefit that they had to move to Hawaii for his work; thus the outrigger canoes. They also have a schnauzer (a.k.a. the Schnazghul).

  April Quintanilla

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1992 by Kate Elliott

  Acknowledgments

  The epigraphs by Empedocles of Agragas (Chapters 1, 18, 20, 24, and 26), Democritus of Abdera (Chapters 2, 6, 10, 12, 13, 23, and 27), Xenophanes of Colophon (Chapters 3 and 11), Musaeus (Chapter 4), Heracleitus of Ephesus (Chapters 5, 9, 14, 19, and 28), Epicharmus of Syracuse (Chapters 7, 15, and 22), Parmenides of Elea (Chapter 8), Antiphon the Sophist (Chapter 16 and 29), Pherecydes of Syros (Chapter 17), Prodicus of Ceas (Chapter 21), and Critias of Athens (Chapter 25) are reprinted by permission of the publisher, Harvard University Press, from Ancilla to The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, A complete translation of the Fragments in Diels by Kathleen Freeman. Copyright © 1966 by Harvard University Press.

  Sappho, lines from “poem 2,” which appear on page 336, are reprinted by permission of the publisher, The University of Chicago, from Greek Lyrics translated by Richmond Lattimore, Second Edition, revised and enlarged; copyright © 1960, A Phoenix Book published by the University of Chicago Press.

  Cover design by Angela Goddard

  978-1-4804-3529-2

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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