by Kate Elliott
“I thought I’d be left one armed, or with a simple prosthetic,” said Yehoshua with a grin, “but Jehane values his people too highly to leave it at that. I just got back from Halfway itself. The best surgical and rehab center worked on me, and then I got my reassignment at my request back to my original unit.”
Alsayid, who Lily had met on and off the past months in the corridors of Franklin’s Cairn, grinned at his cousin and ordered two cups of aris for the new arrivals.
“In celebration,” said Yehoshua. “Please sit down.”
Lily and Kyosti sat, but not before Lily caught Kyosti’s sharp whisper: “Mother bless us, is that primitive thing the best they can do here?”
However, he dutifully admired the artificial arm and watched Yehoshua demonstrate its facility: awkward writing, picking up both cup and glass, manipulating wire and string and, even, his pistol—which he had unloaded for the demonstration.
“So you were with Callioux’s unit to begin with,” said Lily once they had settled in to drink their aris.
“Yes.” His smile was softly amused. “Did you discover that Callioux had planned all along on Harsh to liberate the thirties?”
Lily considered him thoughtfully. “I’ve thought a lot recently about how easy it was to manipulate me, but I suppose I deserved it for being so sure I was manipulating Jehane.” She grinned. “I won’t underestimate him again.”
Alsayid chuckled.
“No,” replied Yehoshua. “It doesn’t do to underestimate comrade Jehane. How did you find out?”
“Oh, Jehane himself told me. He thought it was serendipitous that a test came to hand so easily. I’ve never felt so humiliated in my life. Well, at least not recently.”
Yehoshua still smiled, but gently. “Well, I’m sorry you had to be taken in like that, but frankly it was a rather good job.”
“If you were in on it.” She shook her head. “But I must admit, it was brave of you to volunteer to come with us.”
“Thank you.” He used his artificial arm to reload his pistol and slip it back in its sling. “Although as much as Alsayid and I would like to take credit for unselfish courage, I must reveal that we had a back-up plan, in case yours went wrong.”
“Hoy,” Lily murmured into her cup. She laughed. “I hope I didn’t make too great a fool of myself.”
Under the table, Kyosti patted her reassuringly on the thigh.
“Not at all,” replied Yehoshua. “Why do you think you’re with Callioux? And training well, I hear.”
“It’s more than I hear,” retorted Lily. “But I do like getting to know the ship and the various specialties in our—ah—line of work. How did you two get into Callioux’s unit in the first place?”
Yehoshua shrugged. The glare of Station lighting accentuated the fine white scars on his face and arms. “We’d worked in dangerous conditions before. Cable stripping takes cool and calm and the ability not to hesitate or flinch.”
“Exactly the right qualities for a good saboteur,” murmured Kyosti.
“Or a good doctor,” returned Yehoshua, examining Hawk with interest. “How do you get your hair colored blue at the roots like that?”
“It’s its natural color,” said Kyosti innocently, and he smiled nonchalantly as Yehoshua and Alsayid laughed at his humor. “I hope,” Kyosti continued smoothly, “that you’ll let me look at that arm more closely. Perhaps I can come up with some ideas for modification, and then if we can just find a clever mechanic—”
All four of their wrist-coms lit up at the same moment, followed by a single blended aural alarm, brief but penetrating. “All personnel, report to your stations. Repeat, all—”
Lily, Yehoshua, and Alsayid slapped the “received” command and jumped to their feet immediately, leaving Kyosti relaxed in his chair as the message, softened to one-quarter its previous volume, went on.
“—personnel, report to your stations. Unidentified ship in-system and approaching with evasive maneuvers. Repeat—”
Now Kyosti rose, tapping his com to silence. Through the hub district, white-clad soldiers flooded in groups of twos and threes toward the docking sector: Jehane’s people hurrying back.
“Action at last,” said Yehoshua with relish.
Lily felt abruptly quite mixed feelings: excitement tempered by uncertainty and fear. “I think I’d rather meet face-to-face than locked away in a ship,” she said. She had to lengthen her stride as Kyosti broke into an easy lope.
His expression remained neutral. “In the long run, it makes very little difference. In the short”—he smiled—“in the short, you’re better off face-to-face.”
At the berth itself, one of Callioux’s lieutenants met them personally. “Commander wants you on the bridge,” she said, motioning them to follow while Yehoshua and Alsayid watched this summons with curiosity. When Kyosti turned to head for the medical, the officer gestured at him. “You, too, comrade Hawk,” she added, shrugging to show that she was only the messenger and could not explain this cryptic summons.
The owner of Franklin’s Cairn had been a prosperous merchanter converted to the cause, and the bridge was spacious and well appointed, even with the obtrusive addition of a large weapons bank in one corner.
Callioux did not look up as Lily and Hawk entered, but spoke immediately after the bridge door shut behind them. “We have the initial specs on this ship. It is not a Central military vessel of any design we know. And we have received one cryptic message over comm, while meanwhile they continue to approach with clear evasive tactics. What do you make of this?” Read off the screen lit up on the arm of the captain’s chair. “‘There will be advantage in every movement which shall be undertaken.’”
Kyosti laughed. “Where La Belle leads, the rest soon will follow. You’ve bagged yourself a pirate, comrade.”
10 Yi
“COMRADE OFFICER CALLIOUX.” THE soldier at comm tilted his head back to catch a glimpse of his captain. “We have run the intruder’s specs through all of our data bases, and we have no vessel answering to the description we have here.”
Callioux examined Lily and Kyosti with a keen eye. “Now. The dossier on you two transferred to me from Jehane’s files suggests that you might know something about an unusual sighting like this.” Paused, obviously waiting for their reaction.
Kyosti ran one hand languidly through his hair. “Give me an open line on comm, and I’ll guarantee they will consider you for the time being as neutral.”
Callioux shrugged and signed to the man at comm. “I don’t need trouble yet. Go ahead, but remember, it’s on your head.”
“Isn’t it always?” murmured Kyosti as he walked forward to lean with apparent carelessness on the board.
Lily watched as a composite of the sensor’s description of the unidentified ship took shape on the screen. It did not have the massive, graceful bulk of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, but Lily recognized the lines of a superior technology and did not doubt that this ship had followed La Belle over the lost way from League space to Reft space. For what purpose—she could not imagine.
As the man at comm opened a clear line, Kyosti spoke. “‘It will be advantageous even to cross the great stream.’”
Callioux lifted dark eyebrows in surprise, but turned to face Lily as if she could answer his question.
“I don’t know,” she said quickly, although the seeming incongruity of the exchange reminded her eerily of Heredes’s initial exchange with the Sans Merci.
The unknown ship had clearly been waiting for some such reply, because after only a brief pause, a voice crackled out over comm, deeply smooth, and strong as silk.
“Indeed, we hope we are successful in our enterprise and overcome our greatest difficulties.” Humor permeated the speaker’s tone.
“Unfortunately,” replied Kyosti, evidently enjoying himself, “I don’t possess ten pairs of tortoise shells, although I can’t imagine what you would do with them anyway.”
A pause, as the message relayed back, but now th
e deep voice returned with a sharp tone. “Who is this?”
Kyosti straightened and stepped back from the console, gesturing to Callioux.
“I am Comrade Officer Callioux,” answered Callioux, “Commander of Franklin’s Cairn and her attendant vessels in the Second Auxiliary Fleet of Alexander Jehane’s Provisional Armed Forces. I request that you identify yourself and state your purpose in entering without clearance territory controlled by the PAF.”
“No,” said the deep voice. “The man who spoke first.” A pause. “Send him over.”
Callioux frowned. “I repeat, please identify yourself and state your purpose.”
“I am Yi, of course.” The sheer arrogance of his tone carried easily over the crackle and spit of comm. “I am not interested in this local squabble over territorial and governing rights that you are engaged in. Heavens, Commander, there is so little with which I might increase my personal wealth here in this gods-forsaken corner of space that you cannot seriously believe that I entertain any notion of conquest or plunder.”
The sally left Callioux speechless, caught between shock and indignation.
“No.” The deep voice of Yi paused, reflective, on the syllable. “I am merely engaged, on behalf of one of my employees, in a hunt.”
Kyosti stiffened. His reaction was so pointed that, although he quickly controlled himself, forcing himself to relax, most of the crew on the bridge now stared at him.
“Well?” asked Callioux in a low, tense voice. “Shall I send you over, comrade Hawk? Can you guarantee that this—this mountebank is fully able to defend his insolent tone?”
“Fully able,” said Kyosti softly. He had always been, and was still, at pains to avail himself of whatever methods were available to darken his skin to some facsimile of a golden tan, but now Lily saw him pale. He rested a hand on the console, as if steadying himself. “It is better that I go over than for you to test his strength.”
“I have six ships to his one,” exclaimed Callioux. “And three are advantageously deployed even as we speak.”
“That cuts down on his advantage, certainly.” Kyosti’s expression cleared as he controlled himself, somehow erasing that initial reaction entirely from his face and posture.
Callioux cursed in a low voice, jabbed out some command onto the keys of the screen on the chair’s arm. “Very well. I’ll send an escort with you. Comrade Heredes.” Lily saluted. “You will take your robot and go as well. Record as much information as possible. I want every possible detail on that ship. And I will send a ten with you.”
“Leave Yi alone,” said Kyosti in a quiet voice that brooked no disagreement. “He’s been a privateer for longer than you’ve been alive, comrade Callioux, and even if that weren’t true, he’s called out on a hunt. Don’t even attempt to get between a hound and its quarry.”
“All right,” said Lily as she and Kyosti buckled themselves into the shuttle that would ferry them over to Yi’s ship. “You wouldn’t tell Callioux. For a second there I thought you would be arrested for insubordination. What about me? What is a hound, and a hunt?”
“No.” He did not even look at her. “Don’t talk to me now, Lily.” His face bore a set expression that disturbed her far more than his flat tone of voice.
She remained silent for the rest of the brief flight across, wishing she could see the great ship they approached, and increasingly troubled by the frequency with which Kyosti reached up to touch his hair. It seemed to her a gesture either superstitious or self-conscious, and she was not sure which explanation made her more nervous.
At last they ferried in to docking. She and Kyosti were escorted by Yehoshua and Alsayid rather than an entire complement of ten—Callioux’s one concession. Bach floated behind Lily as they waited in the lock, nudging up against her back.
The lock opened into the ship to reveal a party of ten men and women clad in dullest grey. This escort showed them courteously, but without smiles, up a series of corridors to the bridge elevator. Compared to La Belle’s ship, this vessel had no color at all, although in many places Lily thought she saw some sort of textured ridging at shoulder height, panels as much tactile as luminescent. The ten guards left them to ride in the elevator alone, a journey horizontal and diagonal as well as vertical. When the doors opened, Lily gasped.
The bridge was huge.
She could not hear the speech of the figures at the opposite end. Only a slight undertone in the air suggested to her that they were indeed speaking. At intervals along the expanse of wall, separate stations had been built, peopled now by a few individuals whose uniforms were black. It struck her then that everything on this ship was gray or black or white, lacking color entirely. Without stronger contrasts it was hard to measure the distance between her and the far wall, but she guessed it to be some hundred meters.
She leaned close to Kyosti. “Why would someone build a bridge so big?” she whispered. “The captain can’t even see who we are from so far.”
“But he can hear you,” replied a voice that Lily recognized instantly as Yi’s. It echoed in the vast space. “Come closer.”
Kyosti walked forward immediately, so Lily followed, Yehoshua and Alsayid close at her heels staring about themselves. Bach rose to drift forward just above Lily’s head.
She felt dwarfed and alone on their walk, felt intimidated. Looking behind, she saw that two doors opened onto the bridge on either side of the elevator’s terminus. The undertone of speech stilled as they neared the far wall, dissolving into silence as they came to a halt in front of a simple console at which sat a dark man.
Behind him, the walls held a long, curving bank of instruments manned by more black-clad individuals. Only the man directly in front of them examined them, however; the rest continued with their work.
Yi—for surely it was he—did not speak for some moments. His tongue touched his lips several times as he surveyed the four visitors, as if he was tasting the air. Although he did not rise, Lily could tell by the fold of his body in the chair that he was quite tall. At last an expression of interested surprise crossed his face.
“You are the one called Hawk, are you not? I knew—a familiarity.”
Kyosti inclined his head briefly. “You are astute.”
“Yes.” Yi considered the others in a further silence.
Lily realized with a start that he had no irises: he was blind.
He lifted a hand to a small tray attached on the left arm of his chair, picking up a selection of small sticks. Casting them down, he let his left hand trace their pattern while he surveyed Lily intently. Surveyed her somehow without sight.
“The virtue of brightness,” he said in his deep voice. “Although one sees also tears flowing in torrents. But tread reverently, and there will be no error.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Lily.
He laughed, amused perhaps at her expense. “You are of interest to the Changes. Your passing stirs the stream.” His tone sharpened. “You have with you a rare model. I was not aware that such technology, however dated, was available in this backwater.” And his gaze, however sightless, drifted up to fix on Bach.
“Perhaps,” replied Lily, not without a hint of irritation, “we aren’t as backward as you would like to believe. Why did you want us on your ship?”
“Curiosity,” he said, not without smugness. “But now I know that it was the legendary Hawk who spoke so cleverly to me earlier.”
“Then why did you take evasive action as you entered this system?” she countered.
Yi sighed, as might a teacher when asked a foolish question for the tenth time by the same student. “I took evasive action because it is always prudent to take evasive action. Furthermore, I have met with several vessels claiming to be official military ships in the course of my—shall we say—wanderings in this benighted region, and all were inclined to be hostile.”
“Can you blame them?” Lily asked. “We don’t even know why you’re here.”
Kyosti brushed a hand against her arm, w
arning, as Yi’s expression tightened.
His dark hands fingered a small keyboard on the chair’s arm, and after that he seemed to wait, content not to speak but merely to observe them with whatever senses he used. Yehoshua and Alsayid continued to stare around themselves, amazed. Bach whirred quietly above Lily’s head.
She only knew something happened because Kyosti suddenly stiffened beside her. Glancing at his face, she saw him shut his eyes, clenching them tight as if to prevent them from opening. His shoulders made the beginning of a movement to turn, a gesture he cut off with a jerk into immobility. Yi’s face remained impassive, but his awareness had subtly shifted past her.
She turned.
Across the vast room she saw three people enter the bridge and stop by the elevator. Two of them had blue hair.
Of a different hue than Kyosti’s, certainly tinged with green, perhaps—but without a doubt blue. They were tall, seemed pale, but beyond that, at such distance, she could not tell.
“You see,” said Yi quietly. “I am indeed called to course on a hunt for some of my employees. I have reason to believe you can give me information.” His gaze rested on Kyosti.
Kyosti stood so still he might as well have been paralyzed. He did not respond.
By the elevator, the shortest of the three figures detached itself from the others and began to cross the floor. Yi made a brief, almost undetectable gesture with one hand, and the two blue-haired people left the bridge.
Kyosti shuddered and opened his eyes. He stared at Yi with a look close to hatred. “Why did you do that?” He sounded near gone to rage.
“Is it not allowed?” Yi’s tone might have been mocking.
“Don’t play your damned games with me,” snarled Kyosti, transformed with an anger that seemed to emanate off him.
“I remind you that this is my ship. My ground.”
“Do you think I care?” Kyosti fairly shook with rage. “I repeat. Don’t play your games with me. I’m no longer a piece on this board.”
“Of course you are still a piece,” replied Yi coldly. “You have merely been transformed into the wild card.” He extended a hand, and a grey-clad man passed beside Lily and handed Yi a stoppered vial. “I am called to the hunt, Hawk. What is it worth to you to help me?” He lifted the vial.
