Liaden Universe 20: The Gathering Edge

by Sharon Lee

  “I am here, Chernak,” Joyita said, looking at her, and for a moment it was all bright foolishness, for how could those eyes, dark and bitter and knowing, belong to—

  She cleared her throat. The Enemy’s deceptions had been many and artful, and wore what seeming they would. Remember, she told herself, the children, so pretty and so small, with the death of a fortress and all who had manned it on the tips of their rosy fingers.

  “I wonder,” she said aloud in this time and place, “if I might visit you in your tower? I have a matter to discuss which is…”

  Her voice faltered as she met his eyes.

  He smiled, fierce and proud, and pushed back into his chair, his arms straight before him and his hands against the edge of his desk.

  “I see that I have been maladroit,” he said.

  Chernak’s mouth dried. If Joyita was the ship and a Great Work, then she was a dead soldier, and Stost, too, unless—

  Joyita turned his head abruptly away from her, snapping forward in his chair as if he had seen an alert on one of the background screens. When he turned back, his face was grim.

  “The door to your suite has been locked,” he said, “captain’s orders. Please remain calm.”

  Chernak took another breath and asked calmly, “Where is Stost?”

  “Stost is in hydroponics.”

  She decided not to risk his temper by asking Stost’s condition.

  “Thank you,” she said and composed herself to wait.

  * * * * *

  Bechimo updated her on Kara’s situation as she turned the hall into ’ponics.

  “Tell her I’m coming,” Theo said—or meant to say—and slowed from a run to a rapid walk as she moved through the open door. Hydroponics was a crowded room; best not to run.

  According to Bechimo, there wasn’t any reason to run now.

  “Theo?” Kara called. “I am in back, by the madoes!”

  “Coming,” she said, rounding the corner.

  She stopped.

  Stost was flat on his back on the deck. Kara was kneeling next to him, a wad of absorbent toweling in her hand. The toweling was red.

  “Is he—”

  “I think he hit his head on the corner of the tray when he fell. Really, as large as he is, it’s a marvel he didn’t do more damage—to the plants or to himself! Scan shows no harm, other than the cut. He seems to be…sleeping. Brain activity is consistent with a dream state.”

  Theo stepped forward and knelt on Stost’s other side. Information…she knew Stost was sleeping; there was a finger-long cut on the right side of his head, which was bleeding, but which wasn’t, she knew with a certainty that must have been Bechimo’s, life-threatening.

  “What happened?”

  Kara sat back on her heels and pushed the hair off her forehead with the back of one hand.

  “He—surprised me. He said he needed to know, because of their mission…” She shook her head.

  “I was…frightened, and Hevelin—Hevelin must have understood that because he came racing to my rescue along the mister rods, stopped about six centimeters from Stost’s nose and—Theo, he growled! I’ve never heard Hevelin growl!”

  “Me, neither. He must’ve been trying to make a point. Where is he now?”

  Kara looked down.

  “Well, Rogue? Here is the captain, come in all haste. How will you explain yourself to her?”

  A rusty orange shadow moved by Kara’s knee, as Hevelin used Stost’s belt to haul himself to the downed man’s abdomen. He bumbled over to Theo, and she helped him up onto her shoulder.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  She received a flutter of hesitation and a strong sense of reluctance.

  “You don’t have to do it to me,” she said. “But I need you to tell me what you did to Stost. Did you hurt him?”

  Vehement denial.

  “That’s good to know,” Theo said honestly. “Will he wake up?”

  Yes, of course Stost would wake up. That was conveyed with a slightly wounded air.

  “Also good to know,” said Theo, pausing before she asked, “When will Stost wake up?”

  Indeterminate. She was left with the impression that the waking-up part of the process was entirely up to Stost.

  Theo sighed and looked to Kara, who was kneeling, head down and shoulders rounded in an entirely un-Kara-like attitude, the bloody toweling clutched against her knee.

  “Kara?” she murmured, thinking, She’s not hurt. Surely Bechimo would have told me if Kara had been hurt!

  Kara raised her head. Her face was drawn and rather pale.

  “Are you hurt?” Theo demanded, extending a hand across Stost.

  Kara sighed, got one hand free of the toweling, and met Theo halfway. Her fingers were cold.

  “I’m not hurt, Theo,” she said. “Only frightened.”

  “Do you know what Stost was trying to do? He threatened you?”

  “No…” Kara frowned and shook her head.

  “He said no threat several times, but he was clearly trying to block me, to keep me at the end of the corridor, and I—panicked. I tried to feint, and then Hevelin—bah! I am disordered! I ask your pardon.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’d be disordered, too, if I’d heard Hevelin hiss.”

  From the norbear on her shoulder came a feeling of smug satisfaction. Kara snorted a laugh.

  “It was…startling. As to what Stost wanted…he wanted to know if—if Joyita was the ship, and if the ship was a Great Work.”

  “A Great Work?”

  “It is what he said. I was about to tell him that I didn’t understand, when Hevelin leapt forward to defend my honor.”

  “By growling and doing—something…”

  “Whereupon Stost stepped back, as if he had, indeed, been struck—and fell, senseless, to the deck.” Kara looked wry. “As you see him, even now.”

  “Hevelin—” Theo began, and stopped as a picture began to form in her head.

  She was suddenly facing a large, doglike creature. It had a long muzzle full of sharp teeth which were much too close to her face; so close, she could smell the stink of blood on its breath. There were others behind her, she knew it, and she knew they were hers to protect. She gathered her…brought all of her…to the front of her mind, leaned forward, hissed—and pushed.

  The dog-thing squealed, once.

  And collapsed.

  Theo felt a thrill of horror.

  “Is Stost damaged?” she demanded.

  A strong negative from Hevelin. She caught a faint whisper in what might have been Clarence’s voice, “That’s one way to get an education.”

  Theo looked at Kara and shook her head.

  “Stost isn’t damaged and Hevelin might have taught him something. Or not. Apparently, the growl is reserved for predators, who fall over, stunned or dead, when it’s unleashed.”

  Kara sighed.

  “Then I am triply pleased that Hevelin has never had occasion to educate one of us,” Kara said and looked down at Stost, still sleeping quietly.

  “Shall I fetch a blanket? Certainly, we can’t carry him to a more comfortable situation.”

  Inside her head, Theo felt a click, and a sense of engagement. For a couple of seconds, she had three viewpoints, then the sensation faded, and she blinked at Kara.

  “One of the remote sleds is on the way,” she said. “We’ll lower the bed, roll Stost onto it and take him back to Chernak.”

  “She will be pleased to see him in such a case,” Kara said drily.

  “Stost takes his orders from Chernak,” Theo said. “She probably sent him to…get information from you. From you, specifically, here in the ’ponics room where Joyita doesn’t have a screen, asking questions about a living ship…”

  Kara’s eyes had widened. She pressed her lips together and nodded.

  Theo felt the sled slide comfortingly over her skin and stood up, offering a hand to Kara.

  “Sled’s here,” Theo said.

  * * * *
*

  “Are you the ship?” Chernak asked.

  Joyita shook his head.

  “I am not the ship.”

  “But you are a Work, even if not a Great one.”

  “I believe that I don’t understand your terminology,” he said. He glanced aside, as if at a readout, and returned his dark gaze to her.

  “Stost approaches, escorted by Captain Waitley, Pilot ven’Arith, and Ambassador Hevelin.”

  “An honor guard, indeed,” Chernak said and pressed her lips together. With such an escort, Stost had taken no lasting harm, and that…relieved her.

  “Please remain where you are,” Joyita said. “Door opening in 3…2…”

  On his one, the hall door opened to admit Captain Waitley, with Kara visible in the hall behind. Of Stost, who ought to have been perfectly visible, Chernak saw nothing.

  Once clear of the door, Captain Waitley stepped aside, to allow the utility sled to move deeper into the room: the sled bearing Stost—limp, lifeless, and bloodied—with the norbear sitting tall on his chest, a diminutive, furry hunter proudly displaying its trophy.

  Someone cried out—a wordless thing that was half battle cry and half despair—and Chernak was on her knees at the side of the sled, which had stopped, and the creature was gone, leaving Stost—Stost…

  “Stost!”

  His eyes were closed, and it struck her, like a knife to the gut, that she would never again see herself reflected in them, nor hear his voice, nor feel his hand. She had no one to guard her offside now; no one to mount watch while she slept; no one to watch for; no one…

  “Chernak!”

  A shadow moved. On her knees, she spun to face it—her.

  Captain Waitley’s pale face showed…pity.

  “Chernak, Stost is not dead.”

  She stared. The words made no sense for a moment. The little captain must have seen as much, for she bent over Stost and placed her fingers on the pulse point under his jaw.

  “Alive,” she said. “He’s sleeping.”

  “Sleeping?” she repeated and placed her own fingers to the pulse, felt it beating calm, steady, and strong. Strangely, the knife in her gut twisted harder, and she gritted her teeth.

  “When will he wake?” she managed to ask, around the pain.

  “Soon. We hope. Will you put him to bed, and then tell us—what is a Great Work?”

  * * * * *

  “Stost has been received by Chernak,” Bechimo said.

  “How’d she take it?” Clarence asked.

  “She reacted with strong dismay, having leapt to a theory unsupported by logic—that Stost was dead. Once Theo showed her the error in her reasoning, she became less dismayed.”

  Win Ton shifted in his chair, and Clarence threw him a grin.

  “He’d’ve said, I think, if Chernak’s dismay had led her to trying to hurt anybody.”

  “I did come to that conclusion, after a moment’s thought,” Win Ton said gravely.

  “There was no reason for Chernak to harm anyone,” Bechimo said, sounding slightly aggrieved.

  “Now, you and me, we agree,” Clarence said. “You’ll have noticed that, with humans, sometimes dismay disconnects the logic circuits.”

  There was a small, palpably disapproving pause before Bechimo spoke again.

  “Theo, Kara, Joyita, Hevelin, and Chernak are going to speak together, regarding the pathfinders’ necessities. Will the bridge observe?”

  “The bridge will observe,” Clarence agreed promptly. “Might as well everybody be on the same page.”

  “With the exception,” Win Ton said, as a window opened in the bottom right corner of his secondary screen, “of Stost, who is sleeping.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Bechimo

  Conference Circle

  They shared juice out of the coldbox rations and sat in a circle on the floor. The circle included Hevelin and Joyita. Sitting circle for such things was common across their cultures—well, Chernak corrected herself. Work circles were known across the cultures represented by Captain Theo, Tech Kara, and herself. Perhaps Hevelin had familiarity, also, through his webwork of contacts. But, who could know what…a Work such as Joyita might think or know of circles? He had only nodded when the little captain proposed the formation.

  Chernak paused and sipped juice before she continued.

  “Formidable as they were, the Enemy did not limit itself to organic weapons. It also created…machines. Some were small, so that you could hold them in your hand or slip one in your pocket. It would then influence the fool who had taken it up and gradually enlist them to the Enemy’s cause.

  “Others were larger in scale—self-directed units of destruction. They were…machines, but self-aware. Some looked like armored vehicles, others looked like armored men. Some…were ships. Still others ate worlds, as you or I would eat a piece of cheese. A very few were space stations.

  “The world-eaters and the stations, those were the Greatest Works. They were, as I said, self-directed, alive, and wholly in service to the Enemy.”

  She took more juice and found that she had not quite exhausted her topic.

  “The Great Works…one appeared about Planet Tinsori, at the site of a station that had been destroyed in the First Phase. It was as if the Enemy was making reparations. The Troop would have seen it destroyed, but it was in civilian space; the natives claimed it for themselves, the convenience—the symmetry—blinding them to their danger.

  “On that world, there was a religious order, the initiates of which had long studied the Works and had developed tools and techniques for neutralizing them. Tinsori set a group of such initiates upon the—Tinsori Light, they called it, after the other, which had been destroyed. They trusted that the initiates would influence the agent of the Enemy to forsake its duty.”

  She drained what was left in her cup.

  “Did they?” asked Captain Theo. “Influence the Light to forsake its duty?”

  Chernak turned her hands palm up.

  “There was no news of massacre out of that sector before the Retreat, which the histories we have been reading style the Great Migration.”

  She sighed and said, formally, “I have finished.”

  Captain Theo nodded, but did not immediately speak. Chernak closed her eyes, concentrated on her breathing, and tried not to think of Stost, asleep and most ably guarded by Grakow.

  “The Enemy,” Captain Theo said at last, “remained in the Old Universe.”

  Chernak opened her eyes.

  “So your histories state,” she said politely.

  “You do not believe the histories?” Kara asked.

  Chernak looked at her and at Hevelin curled beside her.

  “I have seen what I have seen,” she said carefully. “And I have seen evidence that following the First Phase, the Enemy rewrote histories and records from afar, in order to sow chaos and to hide those points at which it was vulnerable. We—The Enemy did not win the First Phase, but neither did those who opposed the Enemy. The opposition had developed weapons, and they were sufficiently potent that the Enemy chose to withdraw, and for a time to work from afar. Where the weapons had been stockpiled, the records were altered, the stockpiles lost. The true outcome of the First Phase itself was miscast to teach that the Enemy had been routed, and so complaisance was sown…”

  She looked up then, into Joyita’s face. He smiled at her and shook his head.

  “Right,” said Captain Theo. “You don’t trust the histories.”

  “If you trust none of our records, nor our own account of ourselves…” Kara began.

  “It’s not necessary that Chernak believe the records,” Joyita said. “In fact, it’s better if she continues to question—everything. After all, she’s a pathfinder. I imagine that a pathfinder, like a Scout, will stop asking questions only when she has no breath left to ask them.”

  That was apt, and Chernak smiled.

  “You give an accurate accounting of us,” she admitted, and turned
her head at the sound of a footstep as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.

  Stost stepped into the room, accompanied by Grakow, tail held tall and proud.

  He stopped to see them all in circle, and Joyita in his screen a part of it. Grakow continued into the formation and butted heads with Hevelin.

  Chernak came to her feet to face him.

  “Are you well, Pathfinder Stost?”

  “Yes, Pathfinder Chernak. I am well.”

  “And your wound? Will your wound present a problem?”

  He raised a hand to his temple, face wry.

  “My wound will not present a problem. I have learned much, Pathfinder Chernak, to the good of the Troop.”

  She saw it in him and raised the soft fist in acknowledgment.

  “We will debrief later. For now, will you join us at work?”

  “Yes,” he said and came forward to take his place at her side.

  * * * * *

  “Joyita’s got something up his sleeve,” Clarence commented.

  “I wonder if Theo knows what it is,” Win Ton murmured, his eyes on the larger screens.

  Dust and rock, and more of the same. Occasionally, something would spark in the sullen prospect, or something would—

  “Jump glare!” he said sharply—and immediately doubted himself, for the screens were muddy and the instruments showing calm…

  “Nothing seen here,” Clarence said.

  “No, nor here, now,” Win Ton admitted. “A reflection, then? Bechimo?”

  “Break-in pattern acquired; match program running.”

  There was silence on the bridge, then, while the ship worked. Clarence worked his scans hard, while Win Ton reset his board. In the right bottom corner of the screen, Kara was pouring juice into cups ’round the circle and—

  “I have a match,” Bechimo stated, and Win Ton felt a thrill of relief.

  “Don’t keep us in suspense,” Clarence said, glancing toward the ceiling.

  “No. It is the ship I encountered once before at this location. I was not able to get an accurate reading, then or now. It may equally be a pirate ship, or one such as myself. Previously, they were as anxious not to be seen as I had been.”

  “Increase shielding,” Win Ton said.

  “Certainly, Pilot, if it will make you feel safer. I do not believe that the other ship will approach us.”