Liaden Universe 20: The Gathering Edge

by Sharon Lee

  —straight into Clarence, who scooped him up with the admonition, “This isn’t your shift, you old PIC-grabber!” and bore him off to the galley, sparing Win Ton a nod as he passed.

  Theo ran the ship clean and tight—and it was Theo in this, Win Ton knew, not Bechimo. Left without guidance, Bechimo would do too much for his crew. A benefit of the bonding, perhaps, was that they were not coddled.

  In any wise, a clean, tight ship, which was how the captain had been taught to pilot, so he’d been told, first by Master Pilot Orn Ald yos’Senchul, who had taken an especial interest in Theo at her ill-gotten piloting academy, and reinforced by Pilot Rig Tranza, who had held his copilot to a high standard indeed.

  Taking the vacant chair, Win Ton found the board properly set: Clarence had made sure everything that was off was off, that anything that could be armed was safed except if in use, and for that matter, that his seat was properly adjusted…for him.

  Win Ton sighed. It was a problem: a seat tuned for the last copilot was detuned for the next, and the second seat lacked the automatic controls that adjusted Theo’s chair to her as she sat down.

  “I’m in,” he said, as soon as the chair was properly adjusted. “Board live. Comm live.”

  Theo nodded, turned a glare he was pleased was not directed at him at her screen, and sighed before leaning deliberately back in her seat.

  “Let the incoming fuzz-mail talk to itself, Joyita. Hold anything that doesn’t look urgent.” She looked at Win Ton. “I’d like the three of us to discuss Joyita’s testing protocol, in private.”

  “Certainly,” Win Ton said and looked to his prospective student, attentive in his screen.

  “At least, Joyita, you’ll not have to delay a piloting session while you manually adjust the high-back support tension lock!”

  Joyita smiled.

  “Yes, that’s so, but I do have to recall that I must not be PIC via video for any port expecting to meet me in situ. Sleep-learning is not so available to me as it is to you, or even to Bechimo. The pathfinders have been teaching me much in this regard; I thank them for the information with each lesson!”

  “So,” Theo said drily, “since you don’t have to teach him how to adjust his chair, what are your plans for testing Joyita as a pilot?”

  Win Ton closed his eyes and reached out, ticking off sections of the board, pleased to find his hand sure and his touch firm.

  He opened his eyes and met Theo’s.

  “My plan is to treat Joyita as any other pilot candidate. I will prepare a short verbal quiz to administer before the first level of hands-on testing begins. I will, if necessary, require the candidate to assure me that all work we see will be his, aside from the delivery of information through systems which all or any pilots on board access through the grace of Bechimo. I understand that if required I may trust Bechimo to verify.”

  Win Ton signed verify as well, looking to Theo and then to Joyita in his comm control room. Joyita’s gaze was elsewhere: anyone not familiar with him would assume he was in the process of adjusting his seat to sit properly at board.

  “Yes, of course you can,” Theo agreed out loud, while Joyita raised his hands and produced something that might have been witness crew agrees test boss.

  Win Ton shared a smile with Theo.

  “Hand-sign too? How many languages do you have? I will also mention—as one who is your teacher and wishes you to do well—that was…somewhat awkward.”

  “I speak Terran, Trade, Liaden, and a pre-diaspora language specifically developed to make communication quick and accurate for those of the soldier caste.”

  He paused, frowning as if at a screen, then raised his head.

  “I see that the sign was not only awkward, but unclear.”

  He stood and bowed a very credible student accepting correction from the master.

  “The dialects of hand-talk are not yet firmly in place, due to variations in body language, and what I will call, lacking a better word, accent.”

  “Accent’s as good a word as any,” Theo said. “Everybody has their own style. As long as you’re clear in an emergency, developing your own accent isn’t a bad thing.”

  “I will take that under advisement,” Joyita said gravely.

  He turned as if to sit down, paused—and flung himself into his chair in full emergency haste. Win Ton came half out of his seat in response, then sank back as Joyita spun and smiled gently upon the bridge.

  “My seat here has been a hand’s width too far away from my board since I added my new screens—long before we acquired the pathfinders’ company. I’m pleased to have made the adjustment before my tests.

  “Also, you should know that the pathfinders have been teaching me by secret example several dialects they have yet to share. Bechimo’s crew might take advantage of these forms to provide ourselves an extra range of communication, since not all of the crew is yet bonded.”

  “Indeed, indeed! As time permits, a ship dialect is a good plan, and in fact it is a tradition among certain branches of the Scouts…” Win Ton’s hand-sign to the bridge was simply good plan. “However, we wander from the point. The captain wished to talk about the testing protocol.”

  “And,” said Theo briskly, “how long will it take you to devise an appropriate test, Pilot? If we have a free day, will that be sufficient?”

  His hands shaped an automatic we take this slow in the Terran mode.

  “A full and complete testing will include real-time transitions, a docking or two, full check-outs, and at least one Jump. A continuous test of local work, then a Jump with both ends handled by the candidate, that would be appropriate, I think. I believe that it is most appropriate to do this by the book, as nearly as practicable. I—we—are going to be setting a precedent which others may need to follow. It must be above reproach and hold up to the closest scrutiny.”

  Theo looked startled.

  “Do you think…that there will be others?”

  “I must assume that there will be. Joyita suggested that Bechimo ought to be licensed as well, and, on consideration, I agree. Admiral Bunter, if he has survived, ought also to be tested and certified.

  “Licenses, paperwork, test results—these are the things that pilots, that people—accrue. If there are others—there must be others, Theo! Korval has the services of one such, certified sentient by the Scouts.”

  Theo blinked. Jeeves, of course. She hadn’t thought to wonder…

  “How did that happen, do you know?”

  “It happened because Er Thom yos’Galan, so far as I heard the tale, was a clever, ruthless man who was not afraid to call Balance due.”

  “He threatened a Scout?”

  “Balance,” Win Ton corrected. “He was owed; both parties agreed. And his Balance was that the tests be made, and what certifications there might be, awarded, as if the Complex Logic Laws did not exist.”

  Unexpectedly, delightfully—Theo laughed. Win Ton grinned to hear it and nodded.

  “Yes, precisely. But to return to our topic—we must assume that there are others, and so we must not err.”

  He took a deep breath and looked up to find Joyita watching him, rapt.

  “I must do this correctly,” he said, to Joyita as much as to Theo. “If I fail, if I make an error, all my training and all my deliberate variations from my training will have been worthless, and all yours as well. And if that happens…we’ll all likely be dead for having dared.”

  Theo opened her mouth to speak, but Joyita broke in: “Theo, I’m declaring an urgent situation within the parameters you set at the start of our meeting. There’s a new day posting of Up to the Minot. There will be a hearing on the Primadonna situation within six shifts, as an officer arrives in response to a message Rig Tranza sent via courier. I’m sending the posting to your screen tabs now. Also, Bechimo believes the key is within his grasp.”

  Theo pulled the screen up immediately, as Joyita continued in Liaden: “Win Ton, I never meant to be a danger or a burden to the c
rew. If my existence destroys you, I will—”

  “Stop!” Win Ton was on his feet without quite knowing how he’d gotten there. Theo and Joyita were regarding him with some wonder—as well, he thought wryly, they might.

  He took a breath to calm his tumbling thoughts, and bowed, suggesting quiet and harmony. He bowed, first to Joyita—his student—and, second, to Theo—his captain.

  “Of all of the people on this ship, the most blameless, aside from Grakow and Hevelin, is yourself, Joyita. You must never assume or accept blame for being alive.

  “The rest of us, all of us, put ourselves here at this time and place by our own willful decisions. For the most part, we could have been elsewhere. I could have remained on Liad, a dutiful son of my clan. Theo could have been a teacher on Delgado. Kara might have decided to debark with the others on Codrescu Station, instead of accepting an offer to crew on this ship. Surely, Clarence had options before him, and yet—we are here because we will it. It is as if we are a gathering edge of change that must happen to cure generations worth of errors, if we survive.

  “You, Joyita, are not one of those errors. Neither is Hevelin, nor Grakow. You are carried along on this edge of ours.”

  Win Ton bowed to Theo, a bow of contrition.

  “If we seek to place blame, the most of it must be given me, in any case. I had not meant to do this to you. I had only meant—but we have discussed this. And you, too, have been gathered unwilling into this edge of change. I hope you will, one day, forgive me, Theo.”

  She held up a hand, the Terran signal to stop. She stood, stretched, looked between Joyita and Win Ton. She bowed, a stark thing, yet perfectly intelligible: necessity is.

  “Win Ton, you were right. We, all of us, chose to be here, on this deck, on this ship. I had choices. I could have sent the key back to you. I could have decided that the ghost ship I kept seeing was just what everybody else said it was—a blip in the sensors. I didn’t make those choices. I’m here because I opted in. So did you. So we are in this together; all of us with Bechimo are this edge. Do you understand?”

  Win Ton inclined his head.

  “Yes. I understand. We are crew and comrades, no matter the reasons we are here.”

  Theo gave him a smile.

  “Now, let’s get back to—”

  “Captain,” said Joyita. “Two inquiries have just come in from Minot Station Control.

  “The first is a query into the status of the ship we have docked to us, which we have not referenced in any way in communication with the station. Apparently, they have visually identified the ship as a ship, rather than a pod. Possibly, they have been monitoring it for shiplike activity, and are confused by their readings.”

  There was a pause.

  “I discover no indication of active probes, so I assume visual and passive monitoring only. I have not replied to this inquiry as yet.

  “The second inquiry is perhaps first in priority. There is a question from the Port Administration offices as to our intended route and availability of a mount for a mini-pod. This is in response to our docking statement that we will have minor items to trade and will consider pickup trade and goods. Port Admin explains that they have been authorized to act in the case of time-sensitive cargo which has been unduly delayed. They offer a split upfront and on-delivery payment.”

  Theo sat in her chair, as did Win Ton.

  “We can take a mini-pod,” she said slowly. “I’m curious though, Joyita. How many mini-pods are there among the ships currently on-station?”

  Win Ton’s Screen Three came live; he supposed the image was being shared between them. There was a quick camera scan along the docks, which settled on a single such pod…

  …attached to Primadonna.

  The image grew and ancillary information appeared along the bottom of the screen: dimensional information, pod make, mounting style…

  Theo sighed.

  “Joyita, please let Port Admin know that we’re interested in their proposition, and ask them what the next step is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Bechimo

  Bridge

  “Necessity exists!”

  Deliberately, Theo said the phrase in Liaden, with a glance to Kara and to Win Ton, who both bowed acknowledgment of a point well made. Clarence inclined his head with a fluid hand motion, which meant he’d heard her, and nothing else. His face was properly bland, and he seemed, in that moment, to be completely Liaden.

  Which was, Theo admitted to herself, annoying.

  She shook her head and fuffed at the hair straggling over her forehead. Clarence was pushing hard on his point and…and Bechimo was concentrating on something else.

  “Look, First.” Clarence had shifted to backworld, low port Terran, but he was still somehow drawing on Liaden body language, so that he was speaking from the strength of considerable experience, edged with a brawling, port-tough tension she’d never seen from him before.

  “Look at the case,” he continued. “We got station debating between themselfs if they gotta send somebody down here to take a close, personal look at our pod mounts. We don’t need that; we don’t need the questions that happen, after.” He took a breath and continued in an accent that might, Theo thought, have been the dialect of his youth.

  “Well, now, the luck of ya! Just happened t’find a ship laying around loose, is it? Well, well, ain’t that fine. But what we have to be wonderin’, in an official sort of way, if ya get m’drift—we’re wonderin’ where the crew’s gone to. And, comin’ to think on it a wee bit more, we’re wonderin’ who the owner might be. And, with all that said, why! It ain’t too much to wonder if the lot of ya ain’t just pirates, after all.’”

  Theo glared at him.

  “The ship belongs to Clan Korval,” she said grimly.

  “Which might, as Win Ton had it, play well—but only if the cards come from your hand as captain of this ship who signed a contract with Clan Korval, and from your own personal call, whether you care to let ’em know who your brother is—on a port where they don’t talk Liaden.”

  Theo drew a breath, but Clarence wasn’t done yet.

  “And that means, Captain Waitley—” he said “Captain” with so much vehemence that it almost cut—“that means you need to stick to the ship in case they send a boarding party. The ship is your duty.”

  He paced; she stood with arms folded, not exactly pleased with being lectured, and especially in such a mode. Modes. He came ’round again on his orbit and stopped, facing her.

  “I can see we want to take a look at trade, and I can see it’d be fine if we could get your mentor out of his troubles. But…you’re the very captain named me executive officer of this ship. And I’m saying that my call as exec is that I go see these details in my person. If I got a question, I can call in. I’ve written a few contracts myself, and I can spot a bad pod from the other side of a yard. Still, if you need it, page sets can get couriered right to this ship, for the captain’s review. But…you stay on board until they decide they don’t need to do a tour. Do we have an accord?”

  Theo closed her eyes.

  Things had gotten complicated, that was true. It appeared the port fiscal admins wanted a way out of what was becoming a black hole for them in the form of a ship locked to dock with a cargo they’d preagreed to handle with haste. It also appeared that the dockside of port wanted to be sure of security. Also, they might, yes, be suffering from a surfeit of curiosity, given a very old ship carrying a ship of a design that no one in this universe had seen flying, well—ever.

  “Faster is better, I’m thinking,” Clarence continued, just speaking plain Terran now and sounding a little tired.

  “The money folks get paid more, so if we can get them moving we make it so the docksiders have got to go along. The bet is to look at documents and pull on some beards to make things go fast.”

  Theo opened her eyes to frown at him, not recognizing the idiom. From the looks on their faces, Win Ton and Kara were even more a
drift than she was.

  “I believe that beards are a commonplace among elders of Clarence’s homeworld,” Joyita offered. “The longer a beard, the more important the person.”

  “That’s it, and a long time since I’ve thought at all about either,” Clarence said and sighed lightly.

  “C’mon, now, lass; your Rig’ll keep fine for another couple hours. And station admin won’t think anything out of true with the exec coming in the captain’s stead. Captains’re understood to be busy by nature.”

  Theo sighed, too. He was right. She was the captain; she could delegate. And if anybody came asking official questions, she could explain Spiral Dance. Well. Sort of explain Spiral Dance.

  So she nodded, first to Clarence, then to Kara and Win Ton.

  “Joyita, please let Minot Station Admin know that yes, we are a tradeship, and yes, we would like to hear more about their situation and how we might help them. On the other front…we’ve made our assumptions about what they want. Ignore that query for the moment.”

  She paused, one hand up, signaling wait.

  “Joyita, have you sent yet?”

  “I have not. You appear to be in the process of consideration.”

  She nodded.

  “Right. Let’s cancel that first message and try this instead.

  “Apologize for the delay on a reply. Tell them we’re still syncing our shifts with the port shifts. So far they’ve only asked if we’re interested and capable of handling a mini-pod. Reasonable question—it’s not likely we’re on anyone’s ship capacities lists yet.

  “So tell them—yes, we are interested in principle, and that we have an open pod mount. Let them know we’re prepared to send our executive officer and our chief engineer to Station Admin, to discuss how we might help them. If they ask about performance bonds and the like, tell them those details will be part of the discussion they’ll be having with the exec.”

  She paused, nodded once.

  “The other query appears to be informal, not official. It might just be some docksiders being curious. We’ll just leave that unanswered. If we get a formal inquiry, start it with the juniormost available crew member. Stall, without seeming to, while the rest of this works out.”