I Dare

by Sharon Lee

  All from Val Con's knowledge of the place.

  "I grew up at Trealla Fantrol," he told her, softly, from memory, "but I was born to be Korval. Uncle Er Thom had been fostered at Jelaza Kazone. He made certain that I knew it as well as he did."

  Miri sighed.

  Standin' here, gawkin' like a tourist, she scolded herself. Get a move on, Captain; you got work to do.

  Not to mention explaining herself to Val Con's sister Anthora. She took a breath, feeling Korval's Ring move between her breasts. The last thing Val Con had done was put the Ring on the cord from his shirt, and knot the cord 'round her neck—that, and kiss her—before he went his way and she went hers.

  She understood the reasoning—he was going inside enemy lines—against her best, most vehement, objections. If he was taken—her blood started freezing up, just to think it—or if he was killed, the Ring would be free, and she would be Korval Herself.

  Next target, please, she thought wryly, remembering Daav and Aelliana, likely tied up for months on the Clutch homeworld, like a trump held hidden in a sleeve. If everything bad went down, there were two more yos'Phelium pilots in reserve, to tend for what was left of the clan. Or carry Balance to its fullest.

  She wondered if they'd figured out yet that they'd been had.

  Get moving, Robertson.

  She took one step down the hill, toward the house of the clan—and dropped flat.

  The grass was high here, though not high enough to hide her from a determined look-see. Fortunately, the guy she'd spotted had his back to her; his attention on the house. The movement she'd caught had been him taking a pair of field glasses off his belt.

  He put the glasses up and got still again. Real still. Scout still. Agent still.

  Miri nestled her chin on her arm, watching him watch. Eventually, there was another flash as he snapped the glasses back onto their hook, then a smooth rustle of movement, as he came up into a crouch, and eased down the hill, toward the house.

  Her house, currently occupied by a young woman acknowledged to be, by those who loved her best, more than a little featherbrained, an old war 'bot—and some cats.

  Oh, and, yeah—the Tree.

  Down the hill, the grass shivered as if a light wind had combed through it—the Agent, moving closer to the house.

  Knowing it was stupid, Miri rose into a crouch and went after him.

  HIS SECOND bowed, and waited until he was seated.

  "News from the port, Commander," he murmured and touched the appropriate button.

  " . . . a name, do they?" An uncouth Terran voice snarled out of the speaker. "Fine, here's a name you can give them: Bar Vad yo'Tornier. He calls himself Commander of Agents."

  The Commander folded his hands deliberately atop his desk, closed his eyes and indulged himself in a breathing exercise. When he opened his eyes again, a cup of his favorite blend sat, steaming, at his right hand, and his second was gone. A prudent man, his second.

  Commander of Agents sipped his tea.

  Bar Vad yo'Tornier. His name. His personal name, that he had taken care to hide and hide well, in the filthy mouth of a Terran—

  A Terran what?

  One-handed, he reached to the console, touched a series of keys and listened, impassive, from time to time sipping his tea, to the tale of the holed ship, the conversations between Solcintra Port and the Council, and once more to his name, shouted along the open bands by a heedless, idiot barbarian who—

  Had no reason to know—or means to discover—such a thing.

  Commander of Agents put aside the teacup, and brought his screen live. His second had, of course, compiled the necessary information, which the Commander read once, rapidly; then again, more slowly.

  There was no doubt that the ship, Mercenary Transport Kynak-on-the-Rocks, wholly owned by Higdon's Howlers, Inc., displayed signs of damage on both the orbital scans and the schematic. That it was actually holed—well, perhaps it was, or perhaps it was not, and the portion of Solcintra Port was clear. The mercenaries had been cleared to land.

  In the interests of thoroughness, Commander of Agents opened the file on the Surebleak incident. He had not expected Kynak-on-the-Rocks to match the specs for Surebleak's defenders, nor did it—still, it would have been tidy, and provided a link between Korval and this ship, this barbarian commander, who knew his name.

  Mercenary Sergeant Miri Robertson . . .

  The Commander blinked at the thought.

  Could it be so simple? Val Con yos'Phelium—the Commander could believe that former Agent of Change yos'Phelium might ferret out even the most deeply buried secret, as nothing more than an exercise to pass a slow hour.

  Both subtle and ambitious, Val Con yos'Phelium. And given to flights of unadulterated madness, before the training provided by the Department had normalized him.

  yos'Phelium's last known location was Lytaxin, where mercenary units in the employ of Erob had recently turned back an Yxtrang invasion.

  Methodical, Commander of Agents checked the lists of units known to have been on Lytaxin—and very nearly smiled.

  Higdon's Howlers, commanded by one Octavius Higdon, had been on Lytaxin, one of several units hired by Erob to quell the war which the Department had nurtured.

  The Commander's smile faded. Simple enough to suppose that Val Con yos'Phelium had hired Higdon's Howlers in turn, providing them with a drama, a name, and a port of call. Simple enough . . . And yet yos'Phelium was not a simple man, nor was he a fool. He would suppose that the Department would access just this information—and draw just this conclusion.

  Commander of Agents flipped through the files open on his screen, glancing at the profiles of the odd vessels that had defended Surebleak. A positive identification of those vessels had not yet been made, though the tactical report on Fortune's Reward was thorough. To find a Korval fleet there, obviously in the midst of maneuvers—and now, here, this other ship, carrying mercenaries and cleared to land, crying Balance owed by the Department of the Interior, invoking his own personal name . . .

  Commander of Agents felt a sudden light chill crawl down his arms.

  Val Con yos'Phelium was on Liad. And he meant the Department to know it.

  SHE'D LOST the trail a dozen times, found it again in a bent stem, the outline of a boot-print in a patch of soft soil, a solitary scattering of unripened grass seeds.

  On some level, she was aware that she, Miri Robertson, had never been trained to track like this, moving like a wisp among the high, rustling grass, in deadly pursuit of deadly prey.

  The prey stopped some distance ahead. Miri crouched, consulted her—Val Con's—mental map of the territory, and sighed.

  She was very near one of the perimeter access points—in fact, the gate she'd been making for herself before she took it into her head to stalk wild waterfowl.

  Miri bit her lip. The perimeter was guarded and coded. The gate wouldn't open for a bogus code, though it would deliver a shock, progressively nastier, if anybody was stupid enough to keep trying in the hope of hitting the winning combination. Any attempt to force the gate—also won a shock. The beam was nice and wide, too, which made jumping the fence an equally bad idea.

  Which fortifications and failsafes were all so much fairy dust, if the man she'd been tracking had good access codes—like Pat Rin's, for instance.

  Miri swallowed around a cold surge of horror that felt more like Val Con's than hers, and made her decision.

  Silently, she eased forward, pistol in hand, though she needn't have worried, her prey—sighted barely one hundred paces from her previous position—was completely intent on a project of his own.

  She watched while he worked with a remote unit, apparently keying in pass-code after pass-code, with no success—and without receiving a tangible token of the gate's esteem, either. He'd managed to sync the remote to the gate's keypad, and was apparently committed to taping in codes til the heat death of the universe.

  Or the gate opened.

  Miri closed
her eyes briefly, ridiculously elated, as if the lack of access codes was an excuse for a party.

  Can it, she snarled at herself. His not having the codes don't prove Pat Rin's at liberty the same way his having them would prove the opposite. Loobelli.

  She opened her eyes, bringing the gun up, easing the safety off. She could hardly miss at this range; especially when she wasn't trying nothing fancy, only a simple kill.

  She squeezed the trigger, the snick of the pellet simultaneous with the larger click of the gate opening.

  Miri came up in a rush, running forward. The guy was down and he wasn't moving. She dropped to one knee beside him, confirming that her aim had been good, and reached for the fallen remote.

  "Drop your gun and surrender!" a voice snarled.

  Miri jerked around, saw the woman, the business-like set of her pistol. Behind her, she heard a click. The gate closing, that would be.

  "Drop the gun," the woman repeated. "Or lose a hand."

  "Wouldn't want that," Miri said, softly, feeling the weight of the weapon in her hand. She shifted into a crouch. The woman's finger tightened on the trigger of her gun.

  Miri spun sideways, throwing her gun, punched a button on the remote, her finger guided by blind, stupid luck.

  The gunwoman grunted, her shot in the air, and Miri was up and through the gate, running low; there was a shout, a second shot, and the sound of the gate going home.

  Miri staggered, feet tangling; stumbled and went down, rolling. She fetched up against something hard and gritty, and lay there, heart pounding.

  Her right arm was on fire—she'd probably caught the second pellet. A quick inventory discovered nothing else worse than bruises.

  She opened her eyes.

  The hard, gritty thing was a goodish-sized rock. She used it to pull herself, swearing, to her feet, and looked around.

  The good news was that she was now well inside Korval's perimeter. The bad news—that there was at least one enemy, probably more—and more remote lock-picks, too—around the perimeter, doing their all to get it. And the arm—that was bad; she didn't need the evidence of the blood-dyed sleeve to know she'd already lost too much.

  Not in much shape to go hiking around the countryside, Robertson, she thought, snapping open her pouch and pulling out the first aid tape—and quietly crumbled to the ground.

  HERE AT LAST was the place.

  Val Con breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The distance from the rendezvous site had been somewhat longer than he had estimated—long enough that he had begun to doubt his memory. But, here it was, at last: overgrown, tumble-down, and, gods willing, forgotten . . .

  He held up a hand, halting the rest of the small troop, and turned to catch Liz Lizardi's eye.

  "We part company here, Commander."

  "Here?" She glanced around at the vine covered walls, scrub trees and broken blocks of stone.

  "Here," he repeated, suppressing a smile. Miri's fostermother was not a woman to spend three words where a gesture would serve. "Have you questions regarding the part of yourself and your troops?"

  "Nope, sounds like a paid vacation to me," Liz said. "Bout a klick to the north, we'll find us a park and a street and a door. We guard the door. Anybody tries to go in, we stop them. Anybody tries to go out, we stop them, too." She shrugged. "Higdon sending backup—that a go?"

  "Yes."

  "Then we're set." She looked over her shoulder at her troop of two. "OK, let's take a walk."

  "Commander." Diglon Rifle saluted with alacrity, his demeanor closely resembling that of a child given run of a sweet shop.

  Hazenthull Explorer's salute was more sedate, her face properly devoid of expression, but Val Con could not help noticing the alert set of her shoulders. Nor did he miss the glance she sent to Nelirikk before following her commander down the path to the north—quite a speaking glance it was, too, for all it fell upon a face as giving as stone.

  Ah, youth. Perhaps after . . .

  If there was an after, which was by no means assured. Val Con closed his eyes briefly, thinking of Miri, going overland to Korval's Valley—to home—where she would be safe—or at least safer. This—it was mad, what he proposed to do. Capture the Commander in his own warren? Stop the unfolding of the Plan with a word? Rescue the passengers—oh, aye, just that. And who remembered the old contract—never canceled, never bought out, that tied Korval to Liad—and to honor—down the long years from Cantra to himself?

  They have murdered us—us and ours. It ends, and ends now. No more of mine will be shot down in the streets.

  "Scout?"

  Val Con blinked and looked up into the stern brown face of Nelirikk Explorer.

  "A quick nap," he said lightly. "Pay it no mind."

  "A soldier fights best when he has rested well before battle," the big man agreed.

  "Just so." He looked over to the third of their party, standing a little apart, gazing about himself with—perhaps it was wonder—the tile work of his shell showing pale ripples of purple in the shadowed light.

  "Brother."

  Sheather turned, his big eyes inward-lit.

  "Brother," he said courteously. "Is the time of our departure upon us?"

  Val Con walked forward, showing open palms. "Certainly, the time draws near. Forgive me that I come to you once more and say—it is not necessary that you accompany us after you have assisted in the opening of the door. Stay and watch, if you will. Return to the ship, by my preference. But, to come within—it is more than my heart can bear, brother, that you might be slain in the course of a hasty and ill-considered human quarrel."

  "Your feelings do you great honor," Sheather said solemnly. "Certainly, kin wish to do all within their scope to preserve kin from harm. Just as certainly, we are bound to the word of the T'carais, who has bid me accompany you upon this vendetta, in which you will fully answer those who have slain others of your kin and keeping. This is your duty, as you have told us, and it is a duty the Clutch know as well. The T'carais sends me to his brother, the Deim of Korval, to fight, and to prevail."

  He blinked, one eye after the other.

  "The T'carais has done me the honor of adding to my name. As time is short, I will refrain from speaking it to you in fullness. However, I will tell you that my name now includes a phrase roughly equivalent to 'student of men'." He blinked again, both eyes in tandem.

  "I am the first of our clan to undertake this scholarship. I began because my heart would know certain things. I continue because my T'carais would know in fullness—and my heart is not adverse."

  Val Con bowed, deeply and with sincere respect. "Scholarship is a heady and dangerous undertaking," he murmured. "And of course the T'carais may not be gainsaid."

  Which was true enough, he thought—no word of his would prevent Sheather from following, if the word of the T'carais sent him on.

  He straightened.

  "Attend me, then, brother, if you will. Explorer, guard us—and monitor the broadband. Our signal should find us soon."

  THE ANCIENT and weary locking mechanism scarcely resisted Sheather's song: a note, another—and the thing was done. And done not a moment too soon.

  "Scout," Nelirikk said quietly, "the signal arrives." He paused, head cocked, listening to the tiny comm-link behind his ear.

  "Third repeat."

  Val Con swallowed, thinking of Miri, safe at home.

  Go on then, he told himself. The time is come.

  Dutiful Passage was in orbit.

  MIRI WOKE with no memory of having fallen asleep, and blinked lazily up at the orange cat sitting on her chest, solemn green eyes fixed on her face as if it sat sentry to her awakening.

  "Hey, cat," she said.

  The animal blinked its eyes, and a voice spoke from across the room—a male voice, talking up-scale Terran.

  "Good afternoon, Korval," he said, over a sound like wheels across planking. "Are you feeling well?"

  She turned her head on the pillow, but there wasn't anybody there, u
nless he was hiding behind the heavy-looking metal cylinder, fully equipped with three articulated arms, topped by a lighted orange globe, which was itself weirdly familiar, in a not-her-own-memory kind of way.

  "Jeeves?" She asked, but it had to be it—him.

  "Yes," he said, the orange ball flickering slightly.

  "Great." She pushed herself up, forgetting the cat, which jumped sideways off her chest to the floor, venting a small, peevish hiss. "Plug into the perimeter's brains, there's people trying to get inside the valley."

  The ball flickered—he's thinking, Miri caught from Val Con's memories, and swung her legs over the side of the cot she'd been laying on, unsurprised to find that it was part of a field doc.

  "The interlopers have been dispatched, ma'am," the robot said. "Though I expect there will be more. Perimeter protections have been intensified.

  "I must apologize for allowing you to be wounded. My attention was engaged by concerted assaults at the south and east gates. The lesser attempt at the north gate was hidden beneath the noise. I sent transport immediately I had your direction from Jelaza Kazone, and brought you in to the 'doc."

  She moved her right arm, experimentally. It hurt like hell.

  "Again, I apologize if I misunderstood your necessities. Extrapolating from Plan B, however, I merely initiated a quick-heal."

  "You did exactly right," Miri told him, standing up. "I'm Miri Robertson, by the way."

  "I had surmised as much," Jeeves replied. "How shall I address you?"

  "Miri's fine," she said, wincing as her first step jogged the half-healed arm. "Look, I need the control room, quicktime. There's stuff I gotta be doing, especially if I shot the timing by being an hour in the 'doc."

  "You were in the 'doc for no longer than a quarter hour," the war 'bot told her calmly. "You must try not to strain your wound." He rolled forward, wheels rumbling over the floorboards.

  "Follow me, please, and I will take you to the control room."