by Sharon Lee
* * *
The deepest cellar was an honor indeed—those were rare bottles of Rinork’s favorites, not the best they owned, but certainly the best they cared to travel with. And though technically her son might draw on any of them at will, it was not really the case, as they both knew.
He sighed, taking rein on his impulse and managing not to order of the cha’Ravia with its reputation as spirited wine fit for extremely quiet dinners. That it was said to be an aphrodisiac, well, he knew very well the times his mother ordered it. But the yos’Postal, that was also a fine wine for quiet moments, and of subtle palate as well. Being somewhat rarer, it might well have convincing qualities of its own.
* * *
They Jumped, did Wynhael, almost two Standard days later, after pushing the ship’s meteor shields as they rose through the wide rocky belt to achieve an outgoing orbit above the ecliptic to arrive at the shortest runout possible. Rinork’s second confidential visitor, taxied in from the local trade guild, was gone by the time breakfast was served. Courier Pilot Rand yos’Belin, however, remained with the ship until the final runout was laid in, dropping her vessel away and out of the Jump-effect range with a bone-breaking acceleration to permit the trader’s final numbers verified and safe.
The exhilarated Bar Jan stood on bridge in the aftermath of the Jump, his mother long retired to her stateroom. Screen seven still held the frozen image of the courier ship at cast-off, an image he’d requested be taken. It was, truly, a beautiful ship for a spacer, with no offsetting pods or pyloned add-ons to mar the symmetry of the thing. Most spaceships lacked the look of speed that her ship had, the look of purpose—
No matter if the crew felt he was exhibiting unusual tenderness for the moment, for surely there was an understanding that he’d spent several shifts with the pilot, his man called to deliver meals and wine for two and nothing more.
“Our destination—how long before we broach optical space there?”
The navigator being closest, the response was rapid. “Nearly eight Standard days, lord.”
“And a courier, would it take so long?”
There was some confusion as to who should answer, but again the navigator was closest.
“Much depends upon the willingness of a pilot to take pressure and discomfort, lord. It is what courier ships do, after all. An ordinary courier ship and a tradeship ought to arrive within a few percent of each other for the transfer stage, but courier acceleration and deceleration are superior to trade ships. Departing from the same rest orbit at the same time, aiming at the same rest orbit in another system, one might assume a courier to have a half-day to a day advantage based on in-system traversal.”
Bar Jan considered the statement, feeling several layers of stealthy evasion . . . and what issues might require such?
“Am I to believe then that the ship in the viewscreen is not an ordinary courier?”
Among the bridge crew, a hush as they realized their subtleties had failed them.
“Captain?” Bar Jan dared challenge the seated senior pilot. “Is the ship that was docked with us not an ordinary courier?”
The captain rose from his command couch after handing several duties to his minions, and moved to stand beside Bar Jan, the while staring at the ship.
“My lord, that is the case. To begin with, an ‘ordinary’ courier would have to be available to be bought from a standard shipyard or ship line, to any with the cash. The ship on view here is not so usual as that. The ship on view here—I would suggest that the major difference between this ship and a top-of-the-line Scout courier are the markings, my lord.”
Still levels.
“So Scout couriers are as divided as regular ships into ordinary and extraordinary?”
“Yes, they are. Any high quality pilot might fly a Scout courier, this I know from the Scout pilots I know. The top of the line—those I gather are matched very closely to the pilot . . .”
“I see. Extraordinary Scout pilots are given extraordinary ships to fly.”
“Yes, that is close to the case, as I can see it. Certainly a pilot of proper melant’i will be well aware of the ‘too much ship’ problem when it comes to accepting captaincy. One must be comfortable with the capabilities of the vessel, and of their own understandings of those capabilities.”
They stared together at the ship on-screen, Bar Jan struggling to recall what ships he might have noticed as Scout ships over time. He’d never felt the piloting urge, nor wanted to be more than Rinork Himself, nor had much beyond pod-carrying capacity and the melant’i of a ship’s principal trader. Traders were what marked a ship, and a firm; it was traders who had rank to him, and some even outranked him, either by clanhouse or ring. Since his own needs were sometimes flexible, being aware of the melant’i of a trader was far more important than purity.
Pilots, now, pilots he’d always considered as employees, bought and paid for, employed at will, dismissed at will, and though sometimes entrusted with confidential information, replaceable.
Yet his recent investigations had shown him that he’d perhaps undervalued pilots, that in fact it could be that pilots could move events if given the opportunity.
“And the scouts? Do they publish ratings of their pilots as insurance pools or shipping cartels might?”
The captain laughed, short and sharp.
“The Scouts do not publish such a list, to my knowledge, but piloting is as much an art as a trade, with the artists showing most at the edges of size and at the top edge of ship value.
“Thus the principal pilot of a major tradeship or cruising passenger vessel will be resourceful, capable, alert, pragmatic. The same will be true of courier vessels in general and Scout couriers in particular. The newest ships—which the vessel shown here approximates exceedingly well, by our image matching—why, who would put any but the best pilot in a courier ship that costs as much as a major cruise liner?”
Bar Jan froze his face as best he could, but felt the captain had missed his slip, in any case.
“I see. I have never flown with a courier pilot, Captain. Have you?”
The captain laughed, this time with more of joy than of irony.
“Indeed, sir, I was a courier for Ixin for some few years in my youth, and thus you may say you’ve flown with one. It is a style of flying suited to the young and the restless. But the demands of courier are many, and when I was offered the opportunity to regularize my schedule and my comfort by taking up the administrative lifestyle, I was easily persuaded.”
“As both my delm and myself value your service, it is good that you have,” Bar Jan said, offering an appropriate bow and accepting the proper response, and also seeing the next question rising easily, and seeing too that he’d been in some ways more honored than he’d known by the attentions that Pilot yos’Belin had persuaded him to pursue at some length, as well as by her sharing of her special and intoxicating blend of vya.
“What drives a courier pilot, if I may ask, and what special qualities does one need to continue long in the profession?”
The captain mused, his hum accompanied by the hand motions so often loved by the pilots. Bar Jan wasn’t conversant with the hand-talk, never having a desire to do deep trade with non-Liadens. But pilots, he’d been shown just recently, used such motions in situations where noise might obstruct conversation, or give it away. So yes, he now knew the signs for more, again, continue, pause, enough, stop, and, capitulate.
“Pride, necessity, money—they flow together, lord, but in the end it is the challenge that is all-absorbing, which is the drive, for the time between the action is often long and one must be focused very much on a goal, and have study, strength, and stamina. If you have that drive, why then the rewards are very great. I suppose there’s one more thing, in truth, in case you have a sudden urge to become a courier pilot of an exceptional ship, sir.
“To be exceptional, one must know to an exactitude how much pain one is capable of bearing, and then be willing and able to perform be
yond that. Pain is the most difficult thing, if I may say so, sir. Pain of exertion. Pain of acceleration and deceleration. The pain of heat or cold, the pain of exhaustion, privation, thirst. It is essential that one does not become intoxicated in it, and believe it the goal. It is essential that one not become addicted to it, and thus push past that point of no return.”
Bar Jan bowed the acknowledgment of truth received.
“Clear this screen,” he said finally. “Do we have a trader’s image, or a tactical image, of Franticle? I should like to study the relationship between the trading zones and the Jump zones there!”
The captain gave orders to make it so, while Bar Jan recalled Pilot yos’Belin with extreme clarity.
Indeed, pain could be intoxicating, getting and giving. Yes, it could. He’d made promises, he’d accepted and offered, and how much of it was vya and how much his own desire he was no longer sure, if he’d ever been. Moments of frenzy, stretching for hours, and among it the sharing of his personal necessities, his Balance against this upstart Jethri ven’Deelin, and his glad assumption of Rand’s immediate needs. She’d been so strong, and so insistent—he thrilled even now thinking of the pain raised to joy in her.
He’d heard her advice and knew it good. Challenge the Terrans, and never trust those allied with Terrans. Be strong—soon would come a meeting with this Ixin upstart.
He would rise to Rinork. And she would be sure to be there when he did rise, to help guide him and to introduce him to the powers beyond the Council of Clans, where he could reach his full potential. He would be worthy of her, and all Liad would know it!
Chapter Twelve
Keravath, on Port, Balfour
The change from shipboard isolation to port reality was always interesting, but Jethri usually took that transition quickly. Long ago he’d heard from Paitor, “Don’t stop and stare around you when you come to port, even if everything is odd. It marks you a target for the grifters and shysters.”
So Jethri hurried, the Scout ship’s loan of “weather gear” useful immediately since the ship’s connection to the port terminal was not a tight air-locked tube connection but a casually linked semi-see-through curtain and roof that held gusty wind and well-blown rain only partially at bay. He ended up with water on his face and in his eyes and his attempt to wipe it away was less effective than he liked. He’d prefer to pay some attention to who was watching, feeling oddly out of place dressed as he was in trade clothes rather than crew.
Jethri paused with the wind battering another clear section of sheeting to the point that rain bounced under the bottom edge, and puddled in small lakes.
The Scout ship’s appearance on a Terran port was not unprecedented, the Scout had assured him, though he couldn’t recall ever hearing of such an event when he was still Terran crew—but after his father died, he’d often been denied even the flight deck’s bulletins, half hearing concerns only from unguarded crew talk.
Scout ter’Astin’s assurances weighed heavy with him, there being so many, and all of them important, else the Scout would not be cramming them into his brain so ruthlessly. The Scout’s own mission on world had to do with meeting several “specialists”—which specialty was carefully not shared with Jethri—and these meetings were described as lasting “no later than late evening, local.”
He almost turned back, then hunkered against the second seam, and felt water going down his collar as he kept his face down and looking away from the wind side. The actual terminal was just ahead, but the buffeting was reminiscent of his run-in with a wind-twist in the middle of a vineyard, and he blinked against the water and the memory before pushing forward and gaining the autodoor just ahead.
He didn’t at first see the person standing in shadows a few meters deep in the terminal as he shook the water out of his lashes and blinked, finally out of the supposed protection of the rain curtains. The sounds of the terminal were what he might expect, but there was another, that of someone close to hand, calling his name.
“Hey, Jeth—that’s you, right? Jethri Gobelyn?”
The voice was hurried, female, Terran, low, and both the accent and the inflection familiar. There were others around, including a guard with a peacemaker club and an anonymous sheath, as well as three pilots deep in conversation strolling away from a hall at right angles to the gate he’d just come through.
Jethri paused, alert, Paitor’s warnings not entirely overshadowed by his awareness that he was armed with both a pistol and a backup, and had a Liaden Scout on call at the touch of an emergency button.
She approached rapidly, with a spacer’s pacing, which was no surprise here, and without hesitation, which must be unusual in someone perhaps unsure of who they were speaking to.
Jethri saw no immediate sign of menace in the pace, nor in the bag slung tight under one arm. The other hand swung free, with a ship’s bracelet and several rings clear on the surprisingly pale skin.
Her face was wrapped in a dampish hooded rain cloak, and she was taller than he’d gotten used to females being; her eyes were nearly level with his, and intently interested rather than distant and bland or doubting as an unknown Liaden’s would be.
The face in the hood was made up, lips overfull and sparkled red with silver, skin pale-toned and edging blue toward the eyes, eyes that were lined with blue that faded into the face color in artful streaks. Her ears, too, were tinged with the blue, which matched blue rim-runners curving up the side, decorated with tiny glow jewels . . .
No proper Liaden would have such on her face, of course—not even a Festival dress-up could permit it!
He bowed promptly, out of habit, a bow of civil welcome his protocol master would have been ecstatic to see mere months ago, but one Jethri now knew to be lacking the graces it should have because of his uncertainty—
“It’s me,” she said diffidently, and he knew the voice and felt a pang beyond that of mere recognition before the next phoneme formed, seeing the face beyond the makeup.
The smile took his face from Liaden prince to Terran spacer even before he rushed her, arms and hands wide, to give her a hug she didn’t avoid. “Freza!”
“Freza, from the Balrog!” she managed, even as he squeezed her.
“Perfect!” she said close into his ear and he thought for a moment she was going to bite it, but then she stepped lightly away, shook back the hood, and laughed.
“But what are you doing here? You look set for a shivaree!”
She smiled, and held out a hand, nodding herself into a delightful small laugh.
“A shivaree, Jeth? No, not yet.” She shook her head, smiles and color and—“But tell you what, you are looking so good that you’ll be on the next invite list!”
He was overwhelmed by the wealth of information there, the joy and the concern and the tension in the corner of the eyes. He felt his face letting the smile come through and perhaps a bit of warmth too. He took a half step sideways to avoid the hug trying to build again.
She moved, keeping opposite, excitement in her step.
“Just saw that you were on your way in, and thought I’d say hello. Could have spun me out of orbit with a hand-jet when I saw a genuine Liaden Scout ship come in, posting Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin as sitting second board! Had to be you, but didn’t think you were going for pilot, but there, none of us never really thought you’d be able to get out from under Iza. We ought to talk, if you’ve got the time—we’ve got to talk! I already got a day lounge reserved!”
A day lounge?
He caught a beseeching look and a hand motion that urged quick decision.
His wrist chronometer suggested he had time, if the port was not too complex, and . . .and it was Freza.
He bowed, which made her laugh, but she reached out her hand, which was warm and strong, and he rushed away with her, as if he always did.
She said, “Shhhh” when he tried to to talk, and on they went.’’
* * *
The rush lasted longer than Jethri expected. As Frez
a took him at a rapid pace away from the check-through gate, he saw in the distance a wide hall that turned into a sort of mall, and through that, briefly across a roofed but open-sided way into another building, marked in clear Terran: Top Quarter Temp Units.
Inside, worn hush-step carpeting greeted them, and she pulled more firmly as they rounded a corner where an armed and uniformed Terran guard with her sidekick dog was paying more attention to the lovely lady behind the counter than to the room she might have been guarding.
The numbers looked funny to him: he wasn’t used to seeing doors marked in Terran now, and he almost ran over Freza when she stopped and waved a passkey at a door, pushing him ahead of her.
He stopped just inside the room, seeing that things were larger here than he was used to, not just the day couch, but the table heights, the location of switches . . .
“Phawao . . .” she said once the door was closed, and sealed, and he could hear her breathing was rapid. His was not.
“Not used to full-G,” she admitted, “’cause we’ve been keeping to—”
They were close enough together that Jethri caught the scent she wore again. There was no vya to it, which was perhaps a good thing, for her smile was quirking and she laughed, spun away, and held her hand up as a stop sign.
Flinging the rain hood back and then removing the cloak entirely, she tossed the outer gear causally toward a chair of uncertain hue, and ran her hand over close-cropped hair, gently touching hands to face
He’d remained silent, and waited, willing to watch. She wore day clothes one might see on almost any station—good light-soled gray boots, with soft slacks close enough the same color as the boots and then Balrog’s brown double-pocketed uniform shirt with her name in yellow script. Everything fit together pleasingly—
