Liaden Universe 20: The Gathering Edge

by Sharon Lee

  The shields were up, of course, and Bechimo was vigilant on their behalf. Still, Kara found it within her to hope that they would soon be away. Theo had not been as precise as one would have liked with regard to the length of their stay, nor where they might next raise a port—or return to Bechimo’s home port.

  It occurred to Kara to wonder if Theo’s resistance to the notion of returning to Surebleak might be more than a simple disinclination to seem weak-willed before her brother. Could it perhaps be that Bechimo resisted the notion of Surebleak as his home port—and also of Theo’s delm’s authority?

  Kara put that thought firmly aside with the others, to be addressed when she and Theo spoke.

  And truly, the situation was not…yet…dire, to Kara’s mind.

  This plan, for instance, to give the rescued Yx—pathfinders a condensed narrative of the events of the centuries following the Great Migration, so that they might make a rational and…mature decision regarding the disposition of themselves—that was a plan that could only have originated with Theo.

  For herself, she might, indeed, have brought the pathfinders to safety—one had discovered in oneself a disinclination to simply leave sentient beings to die, even Yxtrang—proto-Yxtrang—soldiers. Had Kara ven’Arith been captain of Bechimo, however, and having effected the rescue, she doubted not that she would have locked them in the stateroom—why not the stateroom, after all? As Theo had said, it was empty. She would then have made it her priority to follow Win Ton’s most excellent suggestion, to transport the rescued to the nearest Scout outpost and lose no time in making them someone else’s problem.

  Kara blinked, realizing that her thoughts had drifted off-duty. She brought her attention once more to the desolate spacescape in Screens One through Five, and sighed softly.

  “I agree that it is hardly a garden spot,” Win Ton said from his station, where he was this shift shadowed by Hevelin. “But I would argue that a lack of flotsam must count heavily in its favor.”

  “So long as we are not the flotsam attractor,” Kara said, meaning it for a joke, and forgetting that Bechimo did not always perceive humor.

  “We do not attract flotsam,” Bechimo said now. “Flotsam was a condition of our former location. I had utilized that location often, and while the amount of flotsam has increased there as we have observed, I have not encountered flotsam in any other of the…quiet places in which I sometimes rested.”

  Or rather, Kara thought, hid. From bounty hunters and pirates, Scouts, the Uncle, and general-issue scoundrels. Among others, so she dared to believe. Bechimo had lived a long, lonely, and perilous life before he had been boarded by one Win Ton yo’Vala, Scout courier, in violation, as Kara understood the matter, of nearly half of the regulations in the rather substantial Scout handbook.

  Win Ton’s choices were his to make; his melant’i his to keep…within the parameters of his delm’s instruction, of course. Kara was Liaden; she did not question these things.

  However, when it came to Win Ton deliberately—knowingly—involving Theo in his choices and transgressions…well.

  There, Kara ven’Arith had very strong opinions indeed.

  Theo had been born to be a captain—it was plain to the meanest intelligence that she must command. Indeed, had she not been born outside the clan, she might have been delm.

  Or perhaps not. Her brother, Val Con, had also been born to command and, as eldest in Line, risen to delm. Very likely, had matters been more regular, Theo’s delm would have given her a ship and a duty that kept her space-bound for years, thus allowing them both to command.

  No, in the case of Win Ton—who was not Theo’s delm and scarcely anything but a passing comrade and a light-love, so far as Theo had ever told it—Win Ton yo’Vala had taken it upon himself to subvert Theo’s melant’i to his own. One would say that he was well served to find the ship key he had sent to her, as if it were a gift of esteem—to find that Theo’s was the Captain’s key, while his was that entrusted to what Bechimo termed the Less Pilot.

  However, Win Ton’s Balance had been harsher than a mere comeuppance of rank. He had fallen into the hands of persons who had tortured him in the hope of gaining Bechimo for themselves, and turned his own cells against him.

  No, Kara decided, as she always did when her thoughts followed this course, Win Ton’s Balance was sufficient to his errors.

  But Theo…

  “The captain has completed her meeting with the pathfinders,” Joyita said from his screen, “and is on her way to the galley for tea.”

  “Thank you, Joyita,” said Kara, and made her decision. Soonest begun, soonest done, she thought. And it wasn’t as if she could keep her mind on her screens this shift.

  “Win Ton, I am going to take a tea break. May I bring you something?”

  “Thank you, but no. I will take my break when you return.”

  She nodded, locked her board, and left the bridge.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bechimo

  It doubtless reflected badly upon him that Win Ton found Kara’s absence more soothing than her presence. There was often a tension between them, which he had at first supposed to do with her desire to keep Theo’s attentions centered upon herself.

  In this, he had done her an injustice. Kara ven’Arith was a woman of melant’i, an engineer of precision, an adequate medical technician, and a pilot of competence, if not brilliance. She was diligent and zealous and not, as he had come to learn, one to demand more from a comrade than a comrade’s care. Certainly, she had been brought up properly, to respect the melant’i of others, and to err on the side of modesty when reckoning her own status.

  No, the tension between them had nothing to do with Kara’s jealousy of another of Theo’s lovers; the cause was far simpler than that.

  Kara simply did not like him.

  She was not, in Win Ton’s considered opinion, entirely unreasonable in this. There were long days together when he felt precisely the same.

  He had been born to an adventurous and optimistic nature—which combination of traits had inspired his parent and his delm to allow him to go for Scout. Even Scouts must accept discipline, and Win Ton had been no exception, except that, perhaps, he had accepted not quite so much discipline as would have been wise.

  Instead of walking away from the old ship—the Old Tech ship—he had boarded it and thus ignited a chain of events of which he was, truth told, not proud…

  …and which had yet not reached its conclusion.

  He sighed, which woke an echo of Kara. She had been, so he thought, distracted at her station, and Kara ven’Arith was not a distractible woman. She was—naturally enough!—discommoded by the presence of the pathfinders on board and unfettered. He admitted to some uneasiness on that front himself, and he had Scout training to support him. The Scout mind found a puzzle in the pathfinders, and all else fell before the need to solve them. Had it been otherwise, he might have formed the opinion that the captain had taken leave of her senses. As it stood, he commended her for a measured approach that sought to keep her crew safe, while regarding the melant’is of the pathfinders and respecting their rights as survivors.

  Really, it was very nearly a Scout-like approach. Win Ton found the decision to lay all of history at the pathfinders’ feet in aid of self-determination to be particularly charming. And how very like Theo, to suppose that providing information and an opportunity to study, would of course yield desired results.

  “Less Pilot yo’Vala,” Bechimo spoke quietly on the quiet bridge, “may I have a word?”

  The crew had long ago adopted informality as the mode upon the bridge. That Bechimo addressed him formally, in Liaden…was perhaps a little unsettling in itself. But, there—the Scout mind had discerned a puzzle.

  “Certainly, Bechimo,” he said, glancing up from his screens and addressing the ceiling. “I hope I am not in your black books.”

  “We share a common hope,” Bechimo said, which would have been very nicely parsed had they been sp
eaking together at an evening gather. On the bridge of Bechimo himself, the parsing hinted at threat.

  Win Ton frowned, but made the proper, evening gather response: “May we also share a happy outcome,” and shook his head, sharply. “Come, sir, out with it. What have I done?”

  “You have done many things, Less Pilot, including proposing to me a captain who is as bold as she is challenging. I am grateful to you; I believe it is not too much to say that I owe you my life. However, I find that I must know the answer to a question—before we venture out again into populated space.”

  “I will gladly answer any question you put to me,” Win Ton said. “And, if we are to speak of saving lives, you have the advantage of me. I was twice dead, but for you.”

  “Please, let our accounts be in Balance,” Bechimo said.

  Win Ton hesitated, then inclined his head. What other course, after all, was open to him? To wish for a precise Balance, in the classical manner, would be to wish for the ship to be in danger.

  “As you say,” he murmured.

  He counted, slowly, to twelve, to give weight to the moment, then raised his head once more. A quick glance at the screens, which showed rubble and naught but rubble, and then he spoke.

  “What is this question?”

  “I wonder,” Bechimo said quietly. “Where lies your loyalty, Win Ton yo’Vala?”

  * * * * *

  The galley door opened and Theo stepped inside. She felt…fizzy. Full of energy, like she’d just finished an exhilarating game of bowli ball. There had been a moment there, when she thought Chernak had been going to come down on the side of the captain was pulling her leg. But she hadn’t. She’d obviously thought about it and, though she hadn’t liked it—who would like to find out that they’d been in translation between universes for hundreds of years, all her comrades and commanders long ago dead? She hadn’t liked it, but she’d accepted Joyita’s so-called theory as the working facts until she got better ones.

  That was good. It was going well. Later—

  “Theo! Would you like some tea?” Kara turned from the tea-maker, holding up a mug. “I’ve just brewed some Grey Pearl. Unless you’d like something else?”

  Theo smiled. “You peeked,” she said, continuing to the counter and taking the mug from Kara’s hand. “Grey Pearl will be perfect, thank you.”

  “You are welcome,” Kara said. There came a brisk hum and a hiss, as the teamaker produced another mug of tea.

  “Anything exciting going on out in the neighborhood?” Theo asked. “Flotsam?”

  “Flotsam is a condition of our previous location. Bechimo is adamant upon this point,” Kara said, looking over her shoulder with a smile.

  “I guess he is.” Theo returned the smile.

  “The meeting with the pathfinders went well?”

  “Better than I’d expected. They said that their orders were first to attach themselves to any of the Troop that had made the crossing intact.”

  Kara turned, mug held in both hands, steam rising gently.

  “They wish to align with the Yxtrang? Theo—”

  “That’s why we’re teaching them to read. Joyita’s chosen texts will give them a quick, solid foundation in how things are in this universe, and also a list of other texts they might find of interest.”

  Kara bent her face into the steam, closed her eyes and sighed.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Theo asked.

  Kara half-laughed.

  “No. You will always believe in scholarship and that informed people will make correct choices. It is what makes you yourself, and I must accept that the belief is core.”

  “You can remove the student from Delgado, but you can’t remove Delgado from the student.” Theo sipped her tea, tasting smoke and roses. She sighed in satisfaction and raised her eyes to Kara’s.

  “That’s actually part of the university’s mission statement. That wherever a student might go in their life, after graduating, they should always carry what they learned with them.”

  “Core,” Kara said again, and sipped from her mug carefully.

  One of Clarence’s veggie rolls would go well with the tea, Theo thought, and took a step toward the cabinets.

  “Theo,” Kara could pack a lot of nuance into one word—Theo thought it came from having Liaden as her first language. Right now, Kara sounded as serious as Theo had ever heard her.

  Kara’s face was just as somber as her tone, with a little worry thrown in around her eyes.

  “Yes?” Theo said, feeling a tiny flutter in her stomach, for no reason she could think of.

  “I wonder if you might ask Bechimo to give us privacy.”

  It really was important; so important that even Bechimo couldn’t be allowed to hear what Kara had to say. Theo took a deep breath and refused to wonder why Kara needed privacy now. There was one sure way to find out, after all.

  “Bechimo,” she said, speaking aloud for Kara’s benefit. “Would you give Kara and me privacy, please? Also, please let Win Ton, Clarence and Joyita know that we’re in private conference in the galley and should not be interrupted for anything less than an emergency.”

  “Of course, Theo. Withdrawing now.”

  She felt him leave, though she could still hear the steady beat of ship systems, and the caress of light along her skin—background feed, that was all, and part of the bonding. Data only. Bechimo himself was gone.

  “We have privacy,” she told Kara and did not blurt out, what’s wrong?

  “Thank you,” Kara said and seemed, for a moment, to be at a loss, staring down into her tea.

  “Would you like to sit at the table?” Theo asked tentatively.

  Kara looked up with a small smile.

  “Yes, let us by all means sit and not loom over each other.”

  Theo laughed softly and moved toward the table.

  “Neither one of us can loom over anybody—except maybe Hevelin.”

  “Which is doubtless why Hevelin’s preferred spot is on one’s shoulder.”

  Kara sat down, as did Theo. They each put their mug on the table. Kara sighed again, and touched Theo gently on the back of her hand.

  “Theo, you know that I esteem you.”

  “Yes, of course! And I esteem you. Have I—have I…” She tried to think of the proper Liaden phrasing. “Have I not been receptive, when pleasure was sought? All of us have been, lately, busy, but I know that I become…focused and unheedful.”

  From the look on Kara’s face, it might actually have been a proper answer, though not to the question she thought she’d been asking.

  “You’d better just say it out,” Theo said humbly. “I’m still all fizzy from talking with the pathfinders.”

  Kara’s face cleared.

  “In fact, that is my topic,” she said and raised a hand, as if to forestall Theo misunderstanding again. “At least, it is a part of my topic. Theo—how is that you can speak so…flawlessly with the pathfinders?”

  Theo took a breath…and hesitated over a line of narrative involving Joyita’s dictionary and extra-intensity sleep-learning levels available to the bonded captain. Which weren’t lies, because she had been sleep-learning the dictionary, just like the rest of the crew. But, while she wouldn’t be lying, she wouldn’t be telling the complete truth, either.

  This was Kara. She wouldn’t lie to Kara, not knowingly.

  And that, Theo realized suddenly with a little chill, was why Kara had wanted privacy.

  “Bechimo augments my vocabulary, guides my pronunciation, and helps me process what’s being said.” She looked straight into Kara’s eyes. “Those are benefits that come to me as bonded captain.”

  “Of course,” Kara murmured. “And these other things—you were always good with your math, calculating courses on the fly and finding the most efficient routes. So, you understand it is not so easy for me to see if Bechimo is also…benefiting you in these matters.”

  “Bechimo’s a lot faster than I am, but we don’t look at the same
things,” Theo murmured. “The calculations and piloting—those are collaborations.”

  “I see.”

  Kara raised her mug; Theo sipped her own tea, savoring the flavor—more smoke and less roses—as the beverage cooled.

  “I understand,” Kara said slowly. “Indeed, as one of the beneficiaries of your actions, I am honored…that you took such decisive action in order to succor crew from the enemies of our ship. But, Theo, I wonder if you might not now…stand down. I—this integration—I worry that it may have…deleterious effects. On yourself.”

  “Deleterious?” Theo frowned, then shook her head. “I can feel the systems running and—other things. But I don’t think they’re harmful. I don’t think the bonding with Bechimo is harmful, Kara; it makes us more efficient.”

  “What other things do you feel, I wonder?” Kara said softly.

  Theo sighed. “Things like—like gasses moving against the hull, the texture of hyperspace. Right now, I’m feeling kind of itchy, with all that dust against the hull.”

  She smiled, so Kara would know that the itching was nothing more than a minor annoyance. “I’m aware that these are…augmented experiences, but I don’t think that it harms me to have them.”

  Kara took a deep breath and placed her hand firmly over Theo’s.

  “Theo, does Bechimo wish to avoid Surebleak?”

  Theo blinked. “He’s not particularly happy about Surebleak, in general, mostly because it can’t be made safe enough to suit him. He does seem to have a lot of respect for—for my brother’s house security ’bot.”

  She shrugged again.

  “The reality is that we’re going to have to raise Surebleak, eventually. For one thing, we have Val Con’s family heirloom secured to one of our pod mounts. Korval is ships, remember? Also—I don’t want to force this decision—Bechimo calculates that it’s within the realm of possible outcomes that the pathfinders will want to interface with the…former Yxtrang soldiers Val Con has as security.”

  Kara’s eyes widened.

  Theo smiled, feeling it sit crooked on her mouth. “Joyita concurs, if that makes you feel better.”