The Sorceress of Karres

by Eric Flint

  Goth waited a few moments, and then ported the lockbar and his security card back to her. She returned them to him a few minutes later, as she made her way to the ISS office. It was an excellent place to see how the security worked around here, and how to organize a suitable proof of Threbus's death from the very people who had caused the problems in the first place. Besides, she got to watch how several very neat spy-devices worked. She'd heard about some of them Hulik, but it was interesting to see them firsthand. It might be useful too, one day.

  Next step, now that she knew how to avoid detection, was to find out when and where the diplomatic bags came in. The bag itself was a ratty old green thing with the imperial crest almost worn off. Goth picked it up, and dropped it again. Shook herself, nearly losing no-shape. It had been around, that bag. Been in places a lot more alarming that Nikkeldepain. Something involving klatha force was going on, and she wasn't quite sure what it was yet.

  Nikkeldepain was far enough out of the way to only get two imperial deliveries a week, and to have a very bored clerk go through them and assign them. It was interesting to see, subradio or no, that requests for information were still passed through to the Nikkeldepain Central Records Office in writing. Identity was the subject of two of those. The clerk sent them back to the ISS office. And the ISS sent a junior duty officer to Goth's favorite building-The Central Records Office. Goth followed, grateful that the ISS woman had decided to walk.

  Goth relieved the ISS of some stationary. She could have inserted the letter into the diplomatic bag, but it seemed a lot harder way of doing it than merely becoming an ISS officer. She'd seen Hulik in full uniform. Even practiced it.

  She waited a week, and then timed her visit for just after the officer had been to check on the identity of someone who claimed to come from Nikkeldepain. A few minutes later Goth went in, instead. In appearance she was the duty officer. She even wore the same perfume. She carried an official request to match the DNA record and dental record of a corpse, which had been carrying the documents that identified him as one Captain Threbus, of the Republic of Nikkeldepain.

  The clerk greeted her perfunctorily. "Back again?"

  Goth nodded. "Yeah. This one got to me via the Ambassador's office instead of via the sorting clerk. "

  "What is it? Another smuggler or pirate claiming citizenship."

  Goth handed over the request. "Body that was found in a military area. A couple of soldiers stumbled on the remains during an exercise. It was an old corpse but we got DNA off the bones. The documents found with it say it's one of your citizens. A Captain Threbus. Do you mind checking for me?"

  The clerk nodded. "Sure. I'll have it for you next week."

  "The ambassador asked if you could expedite it." Goth was very proud of that word. "He was going to call someone."

  The clerk sighed. "Let me ask my supervisor."

  So he did. And a little while later the clerk brought the news that the DNA match was perfect with the record.

  It should be. That was where it had come from.

  Goth thanked them politely and left.

  ***

  The next task was considerably harder. The starting point consisted of finding out just how Pausert's mother was pursuing the matter of Threbus's will. And that was near impossible. Over the months Goth had come to know Pausert's mother Lina relatively well-as well as any young teenager gets to know the mother of one of her friends. But Lina was very good at separating the private from the social. She didn't talk about it, and was very skilled at not saying anything-but getting others to talk. Goth had to watch her tongue. And still was no further along with finding out details. Eventually, she resorted to pretending her parents needed to consult a lawyer, and, as foreigners, didn't know who to start with.

  Lina gave her a long list of whom to avoid, including her current expensive and ineffectual practitioner.

  Goth went off to investigate him.

  It didn't take long to discover that he had a lot in common with Franco. For a start he had a secret wall safe. And for a second he was a slimeball. Goth 'ported all the documents out of the secret safe and spent a good many hours working out what he was up to. Some of it was beyond her. But some plainly involved trust-funds and money. None of it appeared to concern Threbus, which at least removed that complication.

  Chapter 19

  In the Chaladoor the two blips had become four, and then six. Captain Pausert was doing his best with evasive maneuvers, but the numbers were stacking up against them. In the meanwhile Captain Pausert was learning more about the value of history. He wasn't sure that he wanted to right now, but Mebeckey was telling him anyway.

  Decades had passed while worm weather spread out of the Chaladoor, possibly from some place in the galactic east. But, for an historian like Mebeckey, whose studies had spanned eons, history was dates and records-and how the fitted together. From what was known of the Great Eastern Wars when whole planets had died in the gargantuan battles between the men spreading out of Old Yarthe, the date of the coming of worm weather, of the Nuri globes and voice of Monster Moander who crouched on the surface of tunneled Manaret were the stuff of those records. So was the Chaladoor of yesteryear, and so was the danger before the coming of Manaret, that great dimension-crossing ship of conquest filled with the Lyrd-Hyrier lords.

  It had always been a dangerous piece of space. Few reports existed of why this was so, but those few reports did record the presence of the Phantom ships. Mebeckey hadn't had any access to reports of what they looked like. But he could tell the captain this: the last report of the Phantom Ships had actually been recorded just before the first reported encounter with worm weather.

  The Chaladoor had actually, briefly, got safer to cross with the onset of worm weather-with the arrival of the great ship that was Manaret.

  "Looks like one set of problems chased the other out," said Pausert. "Now that Manaret is gone and the Nuris have all faded away. .. the old menace is back."

  "So it would seem," said Mebeckey.

  "You don't know something useful do you? Like how ships got away from them in the past?"

  The archaeologist shook his head. "Other than very rarely, no. But the Phantoms certainly didn't occur in the whole of the Chaladoor region. Most reports of survivors-there were quite a lot, really-came from the Galactic South-the area around Uldune."

  That was useful, Captain Pausert supposed, but only to give him some idea where to run to. And, of course, if your destination wasn't Uldune. "If we can't run, we'll have to fight."

  "How do we fight them?" asked the Leewit, sparkling. "Shoot their front end off, shoot their rear end off, and ram 'em in the middle?" She quoted her favorite phrase of the captain's vocabulary.

  Pausert nodded, and tousled her hair. "Exactly what I would do if they were solid enough to do it to. But they're not, so you will have to do some clever shooting. It's a question of timing!"

  The Leewit nodded thoughtfully. "Got to guess what they're doing. Those missiles of theirs are nasty."

  "They may have other unpleasant surprises too. Remember, they took on the Daal's battlewagons and won. I'm not really sure what keeps them off us."

  The Leewit looked thoughtful. "Could be Little-bit. She makes us a bit different, eh? She says there is definitely something vatchlike about those ships. I think she means the way they have no mass, but can still do things like launch torpedoes and move between stars. If she can feel something there, maybe they can feel her here, looking after us."

  Pausert thought it was odd to think of the little vatch as a "she," but since the Leewit seemed determine about the matter, he saw no reason not to accommodate her.

  "Is she still around?" he asked. "I thought she'd gone elsewhere again. And she hasn't pestered me for more pieces of vatch-stuff."

  "Doesn't need to. She's growing, and she's got to stop eating."

  "Kind of the opposite of us."

  "'Spose so," said the Leewit, who was going through "constantly hungry" at the moment,
and putting on inches in height, too. "Anyway, what are you going to do? We can outrun those torpedoes, but if we turn toward them or get boxed in, we'd be in trouble."

  "Yes. I was hoping to use… " He looked at Mebeckey. "Our booster drive to get us out. Maneuver us into a position where we can fire on them and then run. But the firing is the trick. We'll need to anticipate. To fire the nova guns just as they launch."

  "Pity neither of us do premote," said the Leewit.

  "You just fire on my command," said the captain. "Both you and Vezzarn. Mebeckey, you get yourself strapped in. In your cabin You're supercargo at this stage. Get."

  Vezzarn plainly also got the hint. He really did not like witchy stuff. "Going to ready the guns, Captain."

  "Do that. The Leewit and I need to talk."

  He scarpered. Mebeckey blundered away too. "Don't see how we can do it Captain," said the Leewit. "I can't operate the guns and do the Sheewash drive with you."

  "That's why I am going to have to do the Sheewash on my own. You are much better with the nova guns than old Vezzarn is."

  The Leewit looked doubtful. "But can you, Captain?"

  "I guess I'll have to. A few more of these ships and they can achieve an englobement. Then we're toast. And I reckon we're going to have them pop up on the screens any time now."

  The Leewit looked serious, and worried. "They kept up with us when we used the Sheewash drive, Captain. And without Goth, we can't keep it going for too long." She bit her lip. "The Egger route, Captain. If things get really bad, will you use it?"

  Pausert blinked. The Leewit suggesting her pet hate? "Not without you. I am responsible for you, you know."

  The Leewit scowled. "Got it imprinted in us kids, with the Toll pattern. Get badly hurt and I prob'ly can't stop it happening. But you're different, see. And I worry about you, too. Because I'm also responsible. Goth told me so." It was plain just then that she felt that responsibility very heavily. But she was Karres. They took responsibility when there was the need.

  Pausert had learned, over the years of dealing with the three Karres witches, that when they were this serious, they weren't just children to be humored or jollied. He nodded back. "I'll do it. I think I can. But I have a ship, a crew and a passenger to worry about."

  "If it's that bad, you won't have," said the Leewit.

  He nodded. "Sure. Well lets go and shoot their front end off, shoot their rear end off, and ram 'em in the middle, then. Because I really don't want to use the Egger route."

  "Me neither!" said the Leewit. "Sing out when you want us to fire the guns."

  Soon the captain was alone in the control room, assembling a blunt cone of pieces of wire from a drawer. The wires, the captain suspected, were no more than a focal point for the klatha pattern. He built it in his mind. The strange swirl of orange energy began to build too… in his mind, and then, before it burned him up, he transferred it to where the tip of the cone would be. The Venture leapt like a startled bollem, and then screamed off toward the upper left quadrant of the approaching Phantom ships. The captain heard the Leewit shriek with glee. He realized the Venture was accelerating-but in a jitterbug corkscrew fashion. Belatedly, it occurred to him that one of the more experienced witches-and even the Leewit was more experienced than he-must have controlled directional vector before engaging the drive. But he had no idea how to do that.

  The ship was tumbling wildly about, closer to the Phantom ships. "Fire!" he yelled. One set of nova guns responded immediately, and the second set, the aft ones, seconds later. The captain was just glad he wasn't trying to line up cross-hairs up while the ship was doing a drunken dance. Blue sheet light lightning leap across space and intersected one of the spiky Phantom ships… to no effect. But then the ship must have tried to launch a torpedo.

  The Leewit yowled in triumph like some wild thing out of the jungle. "Got 'im!"

  The captain was too busy trying to concentrate on the twisted pattern of klatha energy to look. They went through the containment barrier the inadequate number of Phantom ships had been trying to mount and-without meaning to cut a high-speed broadside across another. Instinct prompted the captain to yell "fire" again. The truncated cone of wires collapsed as they spiraled out again. The captain gave all the tubes full thrust-the repaired bracket and roughly calibrated tube made the old Venture vibrate and wobble-but compared to his ill-controlled Sheewash it steady and easy. Vezzarn stumbled into the control room a few minutes later. "The little Wisdom got two hits on two different ships. The first one was a real disabling shot, I reckon."

  "They're still behind us, but they've pulled back. Barely in detector range."

  The Leewit bounced into the control room. Punched his upper arm and beamed at him. "You are one hot witch pilot, Captain. They couldn't have had the least idea where to fire."

  There were times for accepting praise-no matter how misdirected-gracefully. Making the crew feel that the captain was in control and good at it.

  This was not one of those times. "They didn't know what we were going to do… because I didn't either. I didn't have any directional control at all."

  The Leewit dissolved into helpless giggles. "I'll show you next time. You did pretty clumping good anyway."

  "Yes, Captain," said Vezzarn, a sly grin creeping onto his face. "Now they think we're completely mad and they're keeping their distance because they don't want to catch it."

  Pausert rubbed his eyes, tiredly. "They could be right at that. Now can you get me something to eat? Because I sure am starving."

  "Coming right up," said the Leewit. "I could use a second breakfast myself."

  "Actually, that'll be your third, child," said Pausert, chuckling.

  "Pooh. Who is counting?" Said the Leewit cheerfully. "You want some cone-seed coffee with that?"

  "Sure. It'd be good."

  Pausert examined the screens while the Leewit went to enforce her will on the robo-butler. They'd managed to lose one of the pursuing craft. But unless he was very much mistaken, they were going to be joined by two more ships.

  He was not mistaken.

  They'd be properly boxed soon. And then not even the Sheewash drive would get them away.

  Chapter 20

  The lawyer that Pausert's mother had been seeing was oilily polite. He held her chair for her, and smiled in a way that made Goth feel faintly uneasy.

  She was not used to the way men treated her, light-shifted to appear to be Hulik do Eldel. It was a little bit creepy, really.

  "What can I do for you, Ms. Dolkan? A matter of a will… "

  Goth produced a very authentic-looking ID card and showed it to him, obscuring the name, but showing a photograph of Hulik. The card was the real thing, and the agent at the embassy was going to be very worried if Goth didn't 'port it back. The picture was a mere light-shift.

  "Imperial Security Service. We are not part of the Empire, Ms." He spoke cautiously, but without any of the fear that might have crept into the voice of a citizen of the Empire.

  "I am actually aware of that," she said. "I'm clearing up some unfinished business of ours. Your co-operation would be appreciated."

  "Ah. Well. I'd be happy to help, where I can, for a fee."

  Goth smiled falsely back at him. "I have an appropriate fee for you in this envelope. Now, I believe you have a client, Lina, the niece of one Captain Threbus."

  "Yes, I do."

  "She is trying to get her uncle's will settled."

  The lawyer pulled a face. "Look, to be frank with you, ma'am, if Captain Threbus's niece hadn't been so insistent, I wouldn't be pursuing this matter. I can't really discuss a client's affairs with you." He rubbed his fingers together suggestively, an expression of greed on his face.

  Goth spilled the copies of the contents of his secret safe onto the table. "Look at those. I think you'll find you can discuss anything I want to talk about."

  The lawyer looked at the papers and stuck his finger in his collar as if it had suddenly decided to choke him. "Where d
id you get those papers?" he said in a frightened whisper.

  "They're copies. We have more. Now I suggest that you assist me, properly. I need to know just what the problem is, regarding that inheritance."

  "These…?" he pointed to copies.

  "Will be destroyed just as soon as that matter is dealt with," said Goth smoothly. She was proud of herself, even if she suspected that the captain would call it blackmail.

  The lawyer tugged at his goatee. "I have investigated the matter. Really. I've got connections inside the Central Records Office. The file is security locked. The evidence says that he's probably dead. He's certainly never returned, and it is over the legal time to declare a missing person dead. But they suspect some foul play. Collusion." He raised an eyebrow. Looked at the lightshift of Hulik do Eldel "It's true, then?"

  "It's true that he died in our service. It's also true that we don't want the heir to know about that area of his work. There is, however, a certain prominent person in the Empire who was extremely upset to find that the matter had been left hanging. I suggest that you actually go through with the steps to have the will finalized. There has been some fresh input from our side. Talk to your contacts inside the Central Records Office."

  "It'll take a few months to get onto the court roll."

  "Months?"

  He nodded. "It's not a process you can speed up. And it's quite expensive."