Liaden Universe Constellation Volume 3

by Sharon Lee

“Is it not delightful?” she asked.

  “Truth said, it casts me off-balance,” he answered, trying unsuccessfully to dry his face with a snow-spangled sleeve. “Weather changes on-planet come with warnings, to simply have random weather flung at one—it distresses me.”

  He was likewise distressed by the room that produced odors in an indiscriminate olfactory medley, though the green room found his favor—flowers and vegetables alike.

  “Here, this one is ripe,” he said, touching the round red cheek of a tomato. “Shall we take it back with us for the evening meal?” This was his third day on the station, and he was growing tired of yeast.

  The Light Keeper frowned at him. “Eat a plant?”

  “A vegetable, but yes. Why not?”

  “I never thought of it,” she said.

  “Someone must have done,” he said lightly, plucking the fruit. “Most stations have hydroponic sections, so residents may reap the benefit of fresh food. Yeast alone does not satisfy all one’s appetite.” He smiled at her. “I would have thought that one as open to sensation as yourself would have sampled every leaf here.”

  “Truly, it did not occur,” she said, and he could see that she was troubled. “How . . . odd. I must have forgotten.”

  They exited the garden and continued their walk.

  “What duty are you called to,” he asked her, “in the control room?”

  He thought for a moment she would not answer him, and indeed, it was impertinence to ask. But his browsing of the library, of those volumes written in a language he could read, had begun to fill him with unease.

  The Light Keeper shrugged. “I prevent the Light from doing mischief,” she said. “And keep it to its location.”

  It was his moment to frown.

  “The station drifts?”

  “No,” she said. “The station moves of its own volition, within the constraints of coords that balance with the expanding edge of things. Part of my function is to keep us at that expanding edge, to maintain the energy levels that keep the coords constant. The Light would be better pleased, if we were closer in, where it could wield its influence.”

  “Influence,” he repeated, as they came to a place where the corridor split. Unthinking, he turned right—and stopped immediately when she caught his sleeve.

  “Not that way.”

  “Why not?”

  A hesitation. “Old damage. The hall is not safe.”

  “May I assist? I am a Scout, and have strange abilities of my own.”

  She looked doubtful. “If you like, I will open the schematics to you.”

  Oh, would she, indeed? Jen Sin bowed softly.

  “I would like that very much, indeed.”

  The Light Keeper ate her half of the fruit greedily, then grilled him on what else out of the garden section might be edible. He laughed and threw his hands up, palms out, to fend her eagerness.

  “Come, if you will open the schematics, then open the garden records, as well, and I will apply myself to research.”

  “Done!”

  He laughed again, lowering his hands.

  “I see I have my work in line.”

  “You asked for work,” she pointed out in her practical way.

  “So I did.”

  She tipped her head. “Jen Sin, I wonder if you might do something . . . else for me.”

  He looked into her tip-tilted black eyes, and thought he knew what she might ask. Indeed, he was surprised that she had not asked before, as sense-starved and solitary as she was.

  “I will do anything that is in my power,” he told her gently.

  “What are these?” he asked, later, fingering the crystal drops in her hair.

  “My memories,” she said drowsily, her head on his shoulder.

  He was drowsy himself, but a Scout fails of asking questions when he is dead.

  “If you brush them out, will you forget yourself?”

  “No. But if something happens and I am not wearing them, I will have no prompts and the Light will be unwatched.”

  Perhaps that made sense in some way, but he lacked context. He would have pressed her, but her breathing told him that she had slipped into sleep.

  He sighed, nestled his chin against her curls, and followed.

  “What progress,” she asked the Light, “on the repairs?”

  Progress, came the reply.

  The Keeper bit her lip.

  “When will repairs be complete?” she asked.

  Unknown.

  This mode was unfortunate. It was behavior from a distant time, when the Light had first come into the care of the Sanderat. The Keeper closed her eyes, called up her will, thrust it at the Light.

  “You will tell me when repairs will be complete and when Jen Sin yos’Phelium Clan Korval may depart, to continue his lawful business.”

  Are you ready to be alone again? The pilot amuses you, does he not? What harm to keep him?

  Yes, this was very bad, indeed. The Light was at its most dangerous when it offered your heart’s desire. She breathed deeply, and made her will adamantine.

  “I will have a time when the ship in your care will be repaired and able. The pilot is his own person; he has duty. It is our duty to assist him, not disrupt him.”

  It is your duty to assist.

  “It is, and as you serve me, it is your duty, also.”

  There was a silence. Rather a lengthy silence.

  The ship will be able to depart in six station days.

  So soon? She bowed her head.

  “That is well, then. Keep me informed.”

  The schematics were fascinating—and horrifying.

  Jen Sin had been a member of a Scout Exploratory Team. He, as all explorer Scouts, had been well-drilled on the seeming and the dangers of what was called Old Tech. His team had discovered a small cache of what might have been toys—small, crude ceramic shapes that might infiltrate a man’s mind, make him receptive to thoughts that he would not recognize as belonging to an Other.

  The cache of toys they had found had been depleted, being able to effect nothing more than a sense of melancholy and foreboding in those unheedful enough to pick them up. His team—well. Krechin had wrapped them in muffle, and sealed them into a stasis box until they could be properly handed over to the Office of Old Technology, at Headquarters.

  The toys had been frightening enough, but he had an extra burden of knowledge, for he had read the logs and diaries of Clan Korval, as far back as Cantra yos’Phelium, who had brought the understanding that the old universe and the old technologies had together been the downfall of vast civilizations. And that had been old technology in small gulps, as might be found in a toy, or a personalized hand-weapon, or a geegaw worn for nefarious purpose.

  To find a working, aware structure entirely built from forbidden tech—that was enough to give a Scout nightmares. Even Korval might quail before such a thing.

  And the Light Keeper’s purpose was to keep it from doing mischief?

  Mischief, by the gods. And his ship was in its keeping. Worse. His ship was in its power, being modified, never doubt it, as he stood by—and did nothing.

  Jen Sin closed the schematics and rose from the desk. He quit the library, and walked toward the hub, where there was a gym.

  Exercise would calm him.

  And then he would need to speak with the Light Keeper.

  “Tell me,” he said to the Light Keeper, as she settled her cheek on his shoulder, “about this place.”

  She stirred, eyelashes fluttering against his skin.

  “This space?”

  “No, the station,” he murmured. “The schematics woke questions.”

  She laughed softly. “What sorts of questions, now?”

  “Well. How did the station come to be? Who built it? How did you come to keep it? Where are the others? . . . Those sorts of questions. I don’t doubt I can find more, if you wish.”

  “No, those will do, I think.”

  She sighed, relaxing against him
so completely that he thought for a moment that he had been cheated, and she had slipped over into sleep.

  “How the station came to be. My sisters of the Sandaret believed that the Great Enemy built it. We found it abandoned, and riding in space where a waystation had been sore needed. The Soldiers were in favor of destroying it, but it was in Sandaret space, and we undertook to Keep it.

  “Three of our order were dispatched . . . Faren, Jeneet, and . . . Lorith.”

  She tensed. He held his breath.

  “Lorith,” she breathed. “That is my name.”

  “May I address you thus?” he asked, when several minutes had passed and she had said nothing more, nor relaxed.

  “Yes.” She sighed again, and became . . . somewhat . . . less tense.

  “What happened,” he murmured, “to Faren and Jeneet?”

  “Faren died in the storm,” she whispered. “We were without power, adrift, for many elapsed units. When we came to rest, and repairs were made—it was no longer possible to reclaim her. The Light took new samples, from Jeneet, from me.”

  Samples. He repressed the shiver, sternly, and asked his next question softly, “What storm was that, Lorith?”

  “Why, the big storm, that shifted everything away from where it had been. When it was done, the Light was . . . where you found it, and not in orbit about Tinsori, as it had been. Tinsori, we were not able to locate. The coordinates of our present location . . . were not possible. Jeneet took our boat and went out to find where we were. That was . . . Much time has elapsed, since then. I fear that she has been lost, or died, or taken up in battle.”

  Korval had an odd history; it was odder still to hear that history from other lips, from another perspective, and yet, that war, that had displaced a universe or more . . .

  from one space-time to another.

  That war had ended hundreds of years ago.

  He stroked her hair, feeling the crystal beads slide through his fingers.

  “Lorith,” he said, gently, oh, so very gently. “I cannot allow my ship to rest any longer in care of the Light.”

  She raised her head and looked down at him, eyes wide and very black.

  “It said . . . six days, as we measure them here, when time is aware. Six days, and your ship will be ready.” She frowned. “I have exerted my will. You will come to no harm, though I will . . . miss you.”

  “You need not. Come with me.”

  “No, who would Keep the Light? It might do anything, left to itself.”

  So it might.

  He sat up, and she did, drawing a crimson cover over her naked shoulders.

  “I must go,” he said, and slid out of bed, reaching for his leathers.

  He was determined and she could not—would not—influence him to wait. She showed him the way to the repair bay, hearing the voice of the Light.

  Little man, you will have your ship when it is properly prepared.

  Jen Sin checked, then continued toward the place where the tunnel intersected the hall.

  “The pilot decides when his ship is ready,” he said aloud. “I go now, and I thank you, and the Light Keeper, for your care.”

  She hardened her will, and pushed at the Light.

  “Let him go to his duty,” she said, and added, terrified for his safety, “unless the ship is not functional.”

  She was an idiot; her fear for him softened her will. And in that moment, the Light struck.

  The walls crackled; she felt the charge build, and simultaneously threw her will and herself between Jen Sin and the bolt.

  She heard him scream, her name it was—and then heard nothing more.

  He came to himself in the library, with no memory of having arrived there. He supposed that he had run—run like a hare from Lorith’s murder, to save his own precious self, to survive against every odd—that was Korval’s talent.

  Craven, he told himself, running his hands into his hair and bending his head. He was weeping, at least he had that much heart.

  But the Scout mind would not be stilled, and too soon it came to him that—he dared not leave the Light unwatched. For who knew what it might do, left alone?

  He had the schematics, and his Scout-trained talents. Did he dare move against it and risk his life? Or ought he to stand guard and prevent it doing harm?

  “Jen Sin?” He would swear that he felt her hand on his hair, her voice edged with concern. “Were you hurt?”

  Slowly, he lifted his face, staring into hers, the pointed chin, the space-black eyes, and the crystal beads glittering in pale, curly hair.

  “You were killed,” he said, toneless.

  She stepped away. “No.”

  “Yes!” He snapped to his feet, the chair clattering backward, snatched her shoulders and shook her.

  A thought tantalized, then crystallized.

  “How many times has it killed you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shockingly calm. “Perhaps I die every time we drift back to quiet after an alert, and the Light remakes me at need. Does it matter? I am always myself, and I have my memories. The sample, you know.”

  He stared, speechless, feeling her fragile and real under his fingers.

  “The sample, of course,” he agreed when he could speak again. “What came of Jeneet’s sample, Lorith?”

  “She did not use the beads, and when I called her back, she remembered nothing.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, recalling the unit he had risen from, and the crystal-cold voice, offering him a choice.

  “Jen Sin?”

  He raised his hand and ran his fingers through her hair, feeling the cool beads slip past his skin.

  “I wonder,” he said, softly. “Is there a . . . sample of me?”

  Her eyes flickered.

  “Yes.”

  “And have you more beads?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is what I think we should do, while I wait for my ship to be . . . properly prepared.”

  The operator sat at her board, and watched the ship tumble out of the repair bay. The scans elucidated a vessel in good repair, the hull intact, all systems green and vigorous.

  She took a breath, and watched her screens, dry-eyed, until the Jump-glare faded, and the space at Tinsori Light was empty, for as far as her instruments could scan.

  He brought the pinbeam online, entered the message, in Korval House code. The message that would warn the clan away, and see Tinsori Light scrubbed from the list of auto-coords in Korval courier ships. The message that would tell the delm the Jump Pilot’s ring was lost, along with the good ship and pilot. The message that would tell the delm that when she needed another packet delivered, it could never again be Jen Sin who would do it.

  Emergency repairs at Tinsori Light. Left my ring in earnest. The keeper’s a cantra-grubbing pirate, but the ship should hold air to Lytaxin. Send one of ours and eight cantra to redeem my pledge. Send them armed. In fact send two . . .

  The ’beam went. He waited, patiently, for the ack, looking down at his hands, folded on the board, ringless and calm.

  He reviewed his plan, and found it, if not good, certainly necessary.

  A ship properly prepared by an agent of the Great Enemy? How could he bring such a ship into the galaxy proper, save for one thing only?

  Comm chimed; the ’beam had been acknowledged by the first relay.

  Jen Sin yos’Phelium Clan Korval pressed the sequence of buttons he had preset, and released the engine’s energy at once, and catastrophically.

  She felt a hand settle on her shoulder, and looked up, finding his reflection in a darkened screen.

  “He’s gone?”

  “Yes.”

  She spun the chair and came to her feet; he dropped back to give her room, the beads glittering like rain in his dark hair.

  “Now, it is for us,” she said. “Will we survive it?”

  He smiled and held out his hand, the big ring sparkling on his finger.

  “Many times, perhaps,” he sa
id.

  Space is haunted.

  Pilots know this; station masters and light keepers, too; though they seldom speak of it, even to each other. Why would they? Ghost or imagination; wyrd space or black hole, life—and space—are dangerous.

  The usual rules apply.

  Landed Alien

  “Landed Alien” happened in part because Theo Waitely had gotten herself thrown off a world—and we needed to get her belongings back to her. That meant that her friend Kara had to get into the act, and that meant—well, we knew what it meant, but we hadn’t told the story to you, and not exactly to us, it being in notes and partials for several years until the opportunity to mark it into a full story came along. Opportunity? Indeed, because we’d been so busy during the start of the Fledgling and Saltation stories all we had time to do was to write novels. There are still spin-offs that need to be written . . . but you’ve got “Landed Alien” here, now, thanks in part to the folks at Baen.com putting it on a front burner for us.

  Pool Pilot and Tech Kara ven’Arith sat in the Station Master’s office, on an uncomfortable, and cold, steel chair.

  She sat alone, hands folded tightly in her lap, face under rigid control. Waiting . . .

  A man was dead. A pilot was dead.

  By her hand.

  She turned her head to the left, and stared for a long moment at the door to the outer hallway and the rest of Codrescu Station. She turned her head to the right, and gave the door to the Station Master’s inner office similar close study. Neither door was locked. Why would they be?

  There was no place to go, and nothing, really, for her to do.

  Save wait.

  Wait on the verdict of those now discussing her and her actions, there in the inner office. Would she live? Would she die? Would she be banished to the planet’s surface, to take her chances there?

  They would decide: the Station Master, the Guild Master, her immediate supervisor, the head Tugwhomper, and the associate supervisor of the pilot pool.

  Kara took a deep breath, and wished they would decide soon.