Constellation

by Sharon Lee

  St. Belamie’s Day had begun as a joke; at need, it had become a code—he’d remembered that, too, and trusted her to do the same. It was a moving target, calculated by finding the square root of the diameter of Skeedaddle, multiplying by the Standard day on which the message was sent and dividing by twelve. Accordingly, she had about twenty Standard Days on Kago before she lifted for Shaltren.

  She’d wanted to time it closer, but there was the ship to be brought up to spec, and she daren’t gamble that Vashon would find nothing wrong. Likely he wouldn’t, but it wasn’t the way to bet, not with Kore waiting for her, with who knew what on his dance card.

  “Couple weeks, local,” she said to Su, and the other woman nodded.

  “Let’s do this again before I ship out,” she said, and finished off her beer in one long swallow. She thumped the bottle to the table. “For now, gotta lift. Business.”

  “I hear that,” Midj said, dredging up a grin. “I’m at the Haven for the next while, then back on-ship. Gimme a holler when you know you got time for dinner. I’ll stand the cost.”

  “Like hell you will,” Su said amiably. She got her feet under her and was gone, leaving Midj alone with the rest of her beer and the tab.

  * * *

  HE WALKED DOWN THE ramp easy, not hurrying, a pilot on his way to his ship, that was all. He turned the corner and froze, there on the edge of the hallway, still out of range of the camera’s wide eye—and the woman leaning against the wall, gun holstered, waiting.

  Waiting for him, he had no doubt. He knew her—Sambra Reallen—who hadn’t been anybody particular, and now ran in Grom Trogar’s pack; high up in the pack, though not so high that calling attention to herself might be fatal. If she was here, calmly waiting for him go through the one door he had to go through—then he was too late.

  He nodded once, turned, and went back up the hall, walking no faster than he had going down, and with as little noise.

  Too late, he thought, as he reached street-level. Damn.

  * * *

  THERE WERE TWO WAYS to play it from here, given that he’d sworn not to be a damn fool. The strike for the ship, that might’ve been foolish, though he’d had reason to hope that the fiction of the Judge’s continued residence would cover him. The judge’s absence would still serve as cover, since he was the Judge’s courier. But the fact that one of Chairman Trogar’s own had been waiting for him—that was bad. He wondered how bad, as he ran his keycard through the coder.

  If they’d been waiting for him at the ship, then they likely knew some things. They probably knew that the judge and most of the household were gone, scattered, along with all the rest of the judges and staff who had managed to go missing before Grom Trogar thought to look for them. It was unlikely that they knew everything—and they’d figure that, too. Which meant he had a bad time ahead of him.

  Nothing to help it now—if he ran anywhere on Shaltren, they’d catch him, and the inconvenience would only make his examination worse. If he waited for them, and went peaceably—it was going to be bad. Chairman Trogar would see to that.

  If they’d been at the ship, they’d be here soon, if they weren’t already.

  The door to the house slid open.

  He stepped inside, playing the part of a man with nothing to fear. His persona had long been established—a bit stolid, a bit slow, a steady pilot, been with the judge since his itinerant days.

  He flicked on the lights—public room empty. So far, so good. They’d take their time coming in—Judges and their crews, after all, had a reputation for being a bit chancy to mess with.

  There was some urgency on him now. He’d planned for back-up; it was second nature anymore to plan for back-up. At the time it had seemed prudent and, anyway, he’d meant to be gone before it came to that.

  Meant to, he thought now, walking quickly through the darkened rooms, heading for the comm room and the pinbeam. Meant to isn’t ‘will.’

  He’d put a life in danger. Might have put a life in danger. If the first message had gotten through. If she hadn’t just read it and laughed.

  I’ll come for you, she whispered in his memory, the tears running down her face, her eyes steady on his. He moved faster now, surefooted in the dark. She’d come. She’d promised. Unless something radical had happened in her life, altering her entirely from the woman he had known—Midj Rolanni kept her promises.

  He’d had no right to pull her in on this. Especially this. Even as a contingency back-up that was never going to be called into play. No right at all.

  He slapped the wall as he strode into the comm center. The lights came up, showing the room empty—but he was hearing things now. Noises on his back path. The sound, maybe, of a door being forced.

  Fingers quick and steady, he called up the ’beam, fed in the ID of the receiver. The noises were closer now—heavy feet, somebody swearing. Somewhere in one of the outer rooms, glass shattered shrilly.

  He typed, heard feet in the room beyond, hit send, cleared the log, and spun, hands up and palms showing empty.

  “If you’re looking for the High Judge,” he said to the man holding the gun in the doorway, “he’s not home.”

  * * *

  VASHON NOT FINDING anything about to blow down in Skeedaddle’s innards, and the vent upgrade going more smoothly than the man himself had expected, Midj was back on-board in good order inside of eight local days.

  She stowed her kit and initiated a systems check, easing into the pilot’s chair with a sigh of relief. The ship was quiet; the only noises were those she knew so well that they didn’t register with her anymore, except as a general sense of everything operating as it should. Of all being right in her world, enclosed and constrained as it was.

  When she ran with a ’hand—never with a partner, not after Kore—the noises necessarily generated by another person sharing the space would distract and disorient her at first, but pretty soon became just another voice in the overall song of the ship.

  And whenever circumstances had her on-port for any length of time, she came back to the ship with relief her overriding emotion, only too eager to lower the hatch and shut out the din of voices, machinery and weather.

  Hers. Safe. Comfortable. Familiar. Down to the ancient Vacation on Incomparable Panore holocard Kore’d given her as a promise after one particularly hard trade run.

  She’d thought before now that maybe it was time to start charting the course of her retirement. Not that she was old, though some days she felt every Standard she’d lived had been two. But she did have a certain responsibility to her ship, which could be expected to outlive a mere human’s span—hell, it had already outlived two captains, and there wasn’t any reason it wouldn’t outlast her.

  She ought to take up a second—a couple of the cousins were hopeful, so she’d heard. The time to train her replacement was while she was still in her prime, so control could be eased over gradual, with her giving more of her attention to TerraTrade, while the captain-to-be took over ship duty, until one day the change was done, as painless as could be for everyone. That’s how Berl took Skeedaddle over from Mam, who had gone back to the planet she’d been born to for her retired years, and near as Midj had ever seen on her infrequent visits, missed neither space nor ship.

  Berl, now. Midj shook her head, her eyes watching the progress of the systems check across the board. In a universe without violence—in a universe without the Juntavas—Berl would’ve been standing captain yet, and his baby sister maybe trading off some other ship. Maybe she’d been running back-up on Skeedaddle, though that wasn’t the likeliest scenario, her and her brother having gotten along about as well as opinionated and high-tempered sibs ever did.

  Still and all, he hadn’t deserved what had come to him; and she hadn’t wanted the ship that bad, having found a post that suited her on the Zar family ship. Suited her for a number of reasons, truth told, only one of them being the younger son, who came on as her partner once she’d understood Berl was really dead, and Skeedaddl
e was hers.

  Full circle.

  The board beeped; systems checked out clean, which was nothing more than she’d expected. She had a cold pad spoke for at the public yard; some meetings set up across the next couple days—couple of independents on-port she still needed to get to regarding their views on TerraTrade’s proposed “small-trade” policies. She’d write that report before she lifted, send it on to Lezly, in case . . .

  In case.

  Well.

  She reached to the board, opened eyes and ears, began to tap in the code for the office at the public yard—and stopped, fingers frozen over the keypad.

  In the top left corner of the board, a yellow light glowed. Pinbeam message waiting, that was.

  Most likely it was TerraTrade business, though she couldn’t immediately call to mind anything urgent enough to require a ’beam. Still, it happened. That’s why emergencies were called emergencies.

  She tapped the button, the message screen lit, sender ID scrolled—not a code she recognized, off-hand—and then the message.

  Situation’s changed. Don’t come. K

  * * *

  THE ROOM WAS SOFTLY lit, his chair comfortable. For the moment, there were no restraints, other than those imposed by the presence of the woman across the table from him.

  “Where is the High Judge, Mr. Zar?”

  She was courteous, even gentle, despite having asked this selfsame question at least six times in the last few hours.

  “Evaluation tour, is what he told me,” he answered, letting some frustration show.

  “An evaluation tour,” his interlocutor repeated, a note of polite disbelief entering her cool voice. “What sort of evaluation?”

  “Of the other judges,” he said, and sighed hard, showing her his empty hands turned palm-up on his knee. “He was going to visit them on the job, see how they were doing, talk to them. It’s a regular thing he does, every couple Standards.” That last at least was true.

  “I see.” She nodded. He didn’t know her name—she hadn’t told him one, and she wasn’t somebody he knew. She had a high smooth forehead, a short brush of pale hair and eyes hidden by dark glasses. One of Grom Trogar’s own—his sister, for all Kore knew or cared.

  What mattered was that she could make his life very unhappy, not to say short, unless he could convince her he was short on brains and info.

  “It seems very odd to me,” she said now, conversationally, “that the High Judge would embark on such a tour without his pilot.”

  They’d been over this ground, too.

  “I’m a courier pilot,” he said, keeping a visible lid on most of his frustration, “not a big-ship pilot. I fly courier work, small traders, that kind of thing. I stay here, in case I’m needed.”

  She hesitated; he could almost taste her weighing the question of the rest of the household’s whereabouts against his own actions. Questions regarding his actions won out.

  “You went to the courier shed this afternoon, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” he said, a little snappish.

  “Why?” Getting a little snappish, herself.

  “I had a ’beam from the judge, with instructions.”

  “Instructions to lift?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you didn’t lift, Mr. Zar. I wonder why not.”

  He shrugged, taking it careful here. “There was a guard on the door. It smelled wrong, so I went back to the house and sent a ’beam to the judge.”

  “I see. Which guard?”

  He had no reason to protect the woman who’d been waiting for him. On the other hand, he had no reason to tell this woman the truth.

  “Nobody I’d seen before.”

  She shook her head, but let that line go, too. Time enough to ask the question again, later.

  “Once more, Mr. Zar—where is the High Judge?”

  “I told you—on evaluation tour.”

  “Where is Natesa the Assassin?”

  She was trying to throw him off. He gave an irritable shrug. “How the hell do I know? You think a courier assigns Judges?”

  “Hm. What was the destination of the lift you did not make?”

  He shook his head. “High Judge’s business, ma’am. I’m not to disclose that without his say. If you want to ’beam him and get his OK . . .”

  She laughed, very softly, and leaned back in her chair, sliding her dark glasses off and holding them lightly between the first and middle fingers of her right hand. Her eyes were large and pale gray, pupils shrinking to pinpoints in the dim light.

  “You are good, Mr. Zar—my compliments. Unfortunately, I think you are not quite the dull fellow you play so well. We both know what happens next, I think? Unless there is something you wish to tell me?”

  He waited, a beat, two . . ..

  She shook her head—regretfully, he thought, and extended a long hand to touch a button on her side of the table. The door behind her slid open, admitting two men, one carrying a case, the other a gun.

  The woman rose, languidly, and motioned them forward. Kore felt his stomach tighten.

  “Mr. Zar has decided that a dose of the drug is required to aid his memory, gentlemen. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  * * *

  DON’T COME . . .

  Midj stared at the message, then laughed—the first real laugh she had in—gods, a Standard.

  “Don’t come,” she snorted, leaning back in the chair in the aftermath of her laugh. “Tell me another one, Kore.”

  Shaking her head, she got up, went down the short hall to the galley and drew herself a cup of ’toot, black and sweet.

  Sipping, she walked back to the pilot’s chamber and stood behind the chair, looking down at the message on the screen.

  “Now, of all the things he might’ve expected me to remember, wouldn’t that have been one of ’em?” She asked her ship. There was no answer except for the smooth hum of the air filtering system. But, then, what other answer was needed? Skeedaddle knew Kore as well as she did.

  As well as she had.

  Twenty-six years ago, Midj Rolanni had been taken up as trader by Amin Zar, and working beside the least of Amin’s sons, one Korelan, who also had a head for trade. Their eighth or ninth stop, they were set to meet with one of the Zar cousins, who was a merchant on the port. Taking orbit, they collected their messages, including one from the cousin: “Don’t come.”

  Amin Zar took a look at that message, nodded, broke open the weapons locker and issued arms. They went down on schedule, whereupon Amin and the elder sibs disembarked, leaving Kore, Midj, and young Berta in care of the ship.

  Several hours later, they were back, Amin carrying the cousin, and a few of the sibs bloodied—and Midj still had bad dreams about the lift outta there.

  After it all calmed down, she’d asked Kore why they’d gone in, when they’d clearly been warned away.

  And he’d laughed and told her that “Don’t come” was Zar family code for “help.”

  She sipped some more ’toot, took the half-empty cup over to the chute and dumped it in.

  The time, she thought, going back and sitting in her chair, had come to face down some truths.

  Truth Number One: she was a damn fool.

  Truth Number Two: so was the Korelan Zar she had known, twenty Standards ago. Who but a damn fool left the woman, the ship and the life that he loved for a long shot at changing the galaxy?

  And who but a damn fool let him go alone?

  What came into play now were those same twenty Standards and what they might have done to the man at his core.

  She noted that he never had said he’d changed his mind, in that first, brief call for her to come get him. The Kore she knew had never been a liar, preferring misdirection to outright falsehoods. It looked like he’d kept that tendency, and its familiarity had been the one thing that had convinced her the letter was genuine; St. Belamie giving her a second.

  And this—this was the third validation, and the most compelling re
ason to continue on the course she had charted, in case she was having any last minute doubts.

  “You gonna die for twenty Standards ago?” She asked herself, and heard her voice echo off the metal walls of her ship.

  You gonna turn your back on a friend when he needs your help? Her ship whispered in the silence that followed.

  No, she thought. No; she’d done that once, and it had stuck in her craw ever since.

  One good thing—she could go on her own time, now, since the way she saw it, “don’t come” trumped St. Belamie.

  Smiling, she reached to the board and opened a line.

  “Tower, this is Skeedaddle, over at Vashon’s Yard. How soon can I lift outta here?”

  * * *

  THERE WERE RESTRAINTS this time, uncomfortably tight, and a violent headache.

  So, he thought, laboriously, you wanted to make the guy with the gun use it, and he did. Quitcherbitchin.

  “He’s back,” a man’s voice said breathlessly from somewhere to the left.

  He’d managed to land some blows of his own, which didn’t comfort him much, since he was still alive.

  A man moved into view, his right cheek smeared with blood and a rising shiner on his left eye.

  Good, he thought, and then saw the injector. Not good.

  He tried to jerk away, but the cords only tightened, constricting his breathing—some kind of tanglewire, then. He might be able to—

  “No, you don’t, flyboy,” the man with the injector snarled, and grabbed his chin in an iron grip, holding him immobile while the cold nozzle against his neck.

  There was a hiss, a sharp sting, and the injection was made. The man with the black eye released him and stepped back, grinning.

  He closed his eyes. Fool, he thought.

  The drug worked fast. The irritation of the wire was the first thing to fade from his perception, then the raging headache. He lost track of his feet, his fingers, his legs, his heartbeat, and, finally, his thoughts. He hung, limbless, without breath or heartbeat, a nameless clot of fog, without thought or volition.

  “What is your name?” A voice pierced the fog.

  “Korelan Zar,” another voice answered, slowly. Inside the fog, something stirred, knew the voice and the name. He recognized, dimly, peril.