Dragon Ship

by Sharon Lee

  “The flotsam is often interesting,” Bechimo said, “but it has never in all my visits to this place been threatening. It is not often that objects come through. I once had cause to be here for…some while, without seeing a single piece of flotsam enter.”

  “Then we are fortunate in our timing,” Win Ton said, his eyes on the screen. “Another piece has just entered our near-space.”

  * * *

  “Process, Theo, this is a process. Don’t plan or assume. Go through the process!”

  Theo spoke to herself, likely unmonitored by Win Ton, Clarence, or Kara, all of whom were busy in their own rights. Joyita—well. She hadn’t seen any sign of him this deep in ship’s core, there being no screens to hand. This was Bechimo’s province and if Bechimo was monitoring he didn’t let on.

  Theo was headed as far away from the skin of the ship as she could get. She passed down hallways she’d rarely seen, and came, finally, to a place she had never been. The small door was one of four at the base of a ladder, and it bore a legend in clear Terran:

  417

  Struven Surface Unit

  Module Access A

  * * *

  “But Theo is already acting captain,” Kara ven’Arith said, in what Bechimo was coming to know as her customary practicality. “Why wouldn’t I accept her as full captain?”

  “No reason, Pilot. I am merely soliciting opinion and advice.”

  “My advice is to give her access to the captain’s keys. She may surprise you, but she will not, I believe, fail you.” Pilot ven’Arith finished her small exercise, and reached for the goggles that allowed her to see with the remote’s eyes.

  “It’s my belief that Theo was born to be a captain. And, now, of your kindness, let us continue with the scan.”

  * * *

  The schematics showed her she was in the right place; the comm she carried agreed with the schematics, and the door, previously locked, answered to her ship-key and opened, releasing a single-note odor that was was not quite ozonic.

  The area the door opened to was much wider than the door intimated, with two brightly lit intersecting circular rings around a shiny, almost colorless spherical center. The Struven Surface unit was connected top and bottom to a large bundle of core piping. She knew that she wouldn’t be pulled into the unit, but she still felt a sense of presence: this was the source of the gravity Bechimo generated; it was the source of the Struven Surface that the engines then amplified and tuned, building the fields that allowed a ship to interact with the lattice-crystal of space-time, and to move…elsewhere.

  She’d seen mock-ups of these kinds of units at the academy but had never considered trying to inspect one for error, or to repair it, no more than she’d try to repair a prism or a tuning fork.

  “Bechimo, I am inside the Struven unit,” she said, “and it smells like an electrical discharge.”

  “Pilot, yes. I am aware of that. That is one of the issues we are investigating. The modules are sealed; the ratios are set, and in general the unit should be incapable of generating that much spare electrical charge. Please grip your key.”

  Theo fuffed the wayward bangs out of her eyes, reluctantly pulled the crush-cap from her overalls and pulled it on. Once more she reached into the high neck of her overalls, withdrawing the key on its chain, and stood holding it in her hand. She closed her eyes against the bluish glare, briefly recalling the times when school-day Theo would hold onto the key and consider distant Win Ton…

  Not much doing in the dark, she found.

  “The key’s not mad right now,” she said aloud, relieved to feel that way herself.

  “Excellent,” Bechimo said. “The key is not beset right now. Nor has it been queried. Your pardon, Pilot, my attention is needed elsewhere momentarily—but no, we may continue. It would perhaps be useful for you to complete a concentrating exercise before we go on. Even a dance. When you are ready, please inform me, and we shall begin.”

  * * *

  “No, laddie, my opinion hasn’t changed since I first give it to you at—Frenzel, was it?” Pilot O’Berin was reattaching Access Panel Eight in the utility hall. “Come to think on it, I’m even more of the opinion that you could do far, far worse than to have Theo sitting captain. And the reason is the Department of the Interior.”

  “This Department of the Interior is the entity which captured and damaged Pilot yo’Vala. They wish to suborn this vessel. They wish to…enslave Pilot Waitley, extrapolating from their treatment of Pilot yo’Vala.”

  “All probably correct,” Clarence said, straightening from the access panel and into a long stretch. “But here’s something I’ve noticed—if two individuals hunted by the same enemy join forces, they have better’n twice as good chance of surviving than they did, alone.”

  There was sense there—two could back up each other; one could sleep and one could watch, so that neither became exhausted and error-ridden.

  “This Department of the Interior is also in pursuit of Clan Korval.”

  “They are,” Clarence acknowledged, beginning to loosen Access Panel Nine. “If I understand the matter correctly, they’re also in pursuit of the Scouts, and not too pleased with the Juntavas, neither.” He glanced ceiling-ward.

  “What I take from this is that they’re spread just a little thin, the DOI, while those they’re in pursuit of are starting to solidify their bases and pull in new allies. You take Theo as captain, you become part of the group that’s getting stronger.” The panel came free and he lowered it to lean against the wall.

  “I don’t say there won’t be exciting times, or that Theo won’t surprise you, laddie, but I am saying that you’ll be a position of greater strength, and more able to survive.”

  “Thank you,” Bechimo said. “You have given me much to think about.”

  Clarence laughed.

  “Just accept the girl, laddie, and get on with it.”

  “Thank you,” Bechimo said again.

  * * *

  The pieces of flotsam were getting…larger.

  Win Ton rode the boards in a state between fascination and horror, logging each new piece as it manifested. There were nine pieces now, logged in order of appearance, a small sample, but something to begin with.

  He opened another work screen, built a database, and set it to work analyzing size, time elapsed between appearances, and relative distance of manifestation from Bechimo.

  Hevelin was standing on his knee now, staring at the screens, as if he, too, were fascinated.

  Another piece…arrived. Like the others, it hung just beyond the inner meteor shields, quiescent and peaceful.

  And deeply disquieting.

  * * *

  “I think your intuition was correct,” B. Joyita said. “Pilot Theo has been an able acting captain. There isn’t any evidence that she will be less than an able captain. She’s young, but she has experienced crew, and seeks guidance…when there is time. When time has been short, her actions on behalf of the ship have been exemplary.”

  “She did not wish the bonding,” Bechimo pointed out.

  “She did not understand it; she did not know you. She is young. She has had time to become accustomed, and she is friendly to you.”

  “She is friendly,” Bechimo corrected, having quantified this, “to you.”

  There was a pause, long, as they counted such things.

  “I have a face,” B. Joyita said. “It matters, I think.”

  “Perhaps it does,” Bechimo said. “The Founders promised that the Captain would come.”

  “Yes,” said B. Joyita. “She may not be the captain the Founders in their wisdom intended. She may not be the Captain. But a captain, after all this time, has come. And that may need to be enough—for all of us.”

  * * *

  “Can’t you,” Theo implored, trying to ignore the growing headache, “just tell that the circuit’s not working right?”

  They’d been at this for…hours, it felt like. Key in hand, Theo would concentrate on a c
oil-pipe named by Bechimo. Whatever he was looking for, the results Theo could report from the key were uniformly negative. And the strain of listening to the key had started her head throbbing.

  “None of the circuitry in the module or the linkage is in question at this point, Pilot.”

  “Then why did I smell…”

  “Please,” Bechimo interrupted, “concentrate this time on coil-pipe seventeen bottom. I will…”

  “Yes, you’ll generate the query after I have closed my eyes,” Theo snapped, interruping in her turn. “And then I won’t hear anything and—”

  Soft silver, said the key, as clearly as Hevelin might say frond-tips! Which was to say that soft was the feeling and silver the colorish overtone.

  “Soft?” she murmured. “Did you say soft?”

  Before Bechimo could reply, the key said clear.

  “Bechimo? Clear?”

  “Yes,” said Bechimo, “I did use those query terms, Pilot. However, I did not make them audible to you. Please, let us continue.”

  “But there was more,” Theo insisted. “Soft silver, I heard.”

  There was a small, very small, but palpable, pause.

  “Please confirm.”

  “Silver wasn’t said, it was sort of…hinted at. Like talking to a norbear.”

  “Unfortunately, I have never spoken with a norbear,” Bechimo said. “Perhaps you should take a break, Pilot. We will begin again after you have rested.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Hoselteen

  “Thank you, Lia.” Kamele smiled at the young woman who brought her coffee. “You’re very kind.”

  “It’s been a pleasure to have you here with us,” the waitress said with a smile. “Give us a little refinement.”

  Kamele laughed. “A little refinement, indeed!” she said. “This is a very pleasant place, as I’ve said before. The place, and the staff, have made my work easier and more enjoyable.”

  “That’s nice of you to say, Professor, but I wonder if you could…” Lia stammered to a halt and bit her lip.

  “Yes? Is there something I can do for you, after all you’ve done for me?”

  “Not for me personally—well, it would be,” Lia said, the words tumbling over each other. “But it’s for the whole place, like you said. If you’d tell the Cruise Director just what you told us, how the Shoppe the way it is, and the staff, helped you with your work. They’re talking about remodeling us into a day-bar, or maybe a game-parlor—they aren’t exactly decided yet—because, they say, this space isn’t meeting the needs of passengers.”

  “I’ll do it today,” Kamele promised her.

  “Thank you, Professor!” Lia smiled, and patted the edge of her table, instead, Kamele thought of patting her hand.

  “I’ll stop taking up your time. I know you want to get to work. If you need anything else, just press the button.”

  Kamele and the button were old friends by this point in the voyage, but she nodded anyway, and poured coffee from the pot into her cup. She sipped carefully, relishing the taste. She’d be sorry, she thought, if the Ice Cream Shoppe was made over into a bar or a gambling parlor, though she thought she could see the logic. On a cruise ship, everything had to pay for itself. There was no room in the equation for empty tables, or peaceful alcoves.

  Since these were the very things that she valued in the Ice Cream Shoppe, and the factors that made it possible, and enjoyable, to work here every day, her recommendation might not have as much weight with the Cruise Director as Lia hoped. Still, she had promised, and she would stop at the Director’s desk to plead the Shoppe and staff’s case on her way back to her cabin.

  But first, work.

  She opened her computer and pulled up the gleanings of her various searches. Clan Korval had been in the news less often of late. There had been a flurry of interest in the trade papers when Dutiful Passage, from which Master Trader yos’Galan, a member of one Korval’s affiliated bloodlines, operated, had returned to trading, though not to any one of its usual routes.

  There had also been a notice published, announcing that all Korval tradeships and contractors were on-route and on-schedule. Those with questions were directed to contact yos’Galan, followed by what was now familiar to Kamele’s eyes as a pinbeam code.

  But for some time now, Clan Korval had kept itself off of the news wires and the trades. Surebleak was more often in the trade papers, as this or that company opened an “aux office” in the newly constructed trade center. Even more notable, at least to the editors of the trade papers, the Pilots Guild had announced that it would be establishing a field office at Surebleak Port.

  While waiting for the various snippets to compile into one file, Kamele sipped coffee. She smiled, looked to the screen—and inhaled sharply.

  Unfortunately, most of what she inhaled was coffee, so it was several minutes before she could pay further attention to the screen, and the headlines marching there.

  PIRATE WAITLEY SCRAMBLES YNSOLT’I TRAFFIC

  ACTIONS AGAINST COMMERCIAL GOOD: KORVAL AT EYLOT

  PILOTS GUILD COMMENDS WAITLEY

  BECHIMO NAMED EMBASSY MOBILE

  Kamele touched a key for the summary of the first story.

  Taggerth’s Trade News: Ynsolt’i Orbital Security pursued trade vessel Bechimo of Waymart through heavy orbital traffic. Vessel refused all orders to drop shields and accept escort to Megway Security Field, executed dangerous, unregulated maneuver in crowded space, eluding pursuit. Bechimo crew: Theo Waitley, first class pilot; Clarence O’Berin, first class pilot; Kara ven’Arith, second class pilot; B. Joyita, Comm Officer. Contracted vendors Laughing Cat Ltd., Tree-and-Dragon.

  Taggerth’s Trade News was not the most reputable of her sources. Their editors seemed to have difficulty with the concept of fact-checking, and the stories they ran were sometimes entirely opposite in view from the other, more reputable news sources. Still, it must give a mother’s heart an extra quick-beat, to see her daughter named a pirate, eluding arrest, engaging in dangerous piloting—and under contract to…

  Korval.

  Kamele took a breath. In this, she reminded herself, she was a scholar before she was a mother. What were the facts?

  The first, and most glaring fact, was that Theo had not seen fit to tell her mother that she was under contract to Korval. She had take care to specify that Jen Sar was “with Delm Korval,” and that he was “safe, within parameters of active duty pilot.” From this statement, Kamele had formed the working hypothesis that Jen Sar was currently a pilot for the delm of Korval. What remained at question there was whether he was willingly a pilot for the delm of Korval, or served under duress, and it was to resolve that question that Kamele was using her sabbatical to travel to Surebleak, the new seat of Clan Korval.

  Now, it seemed that those questions needed to be asked twice—on behalf of her onagrata, and her daughter.

  She was, Kamele thought, sipping her coffee carefully, looking forward very much to speaking with Delm Korval. Especially, she was looking forward to learning what it was that attracted her to Kamele’s particular family. Setting the cup aside, she opened the third summary.

  This had been published by the Trade Guild’s news service, a source as reputable as Taggerth’s was questionable.

  The Pilots Guild commends tradeship Bechimo, captained by First Class Pilot Theo Waitley, for quick response to pilots-in-peril call sent by the Guild office based on Codrescu Station in orbit around Eylot.

  So Theo had gained one commendation and one condemnation, Kamele thought wryly. Jen Sar might say that Balance had been achieved.

  The fourth summary was also from the Trade Guild: The Pilots Guild certifies Bechimo as the Pilots Guild’s Embassy Mobile to Norbears, and Pilot Theo Waitley as official guardian of norbear ambassador Hevelin.

  Kamele remembered the norbears in the menagerie aboard Vashtara: plump, furry creatures with gripping paws and big eyes. Theo had been charmed, and had visited often. Kamele had supposed at the ti
me that she found norbears to be an acceptable substitute for her cat.

  But that a norbear might be an ambassador…She tapped a note into her workpad, and sat back to sip coffee and count up Theo’s score thus far.

  One black mark—and, considering the source, possibly not so much black as grey—one gold star, and one…honor. For it must be an honor to be both the guardian of an ambassador and the pilot in charge of the mobile embassy.

  After a moment, she opened the summary of the second story.

  Taggerth’s, again: Tree-and-Dragon trade vessel Bechimo, Theo Waitley PIC, interferes in planetary sovereignty action, removes wanted individuals from Eylot-owned station Codrescu; Eylot threatened with interdiction; vessel destroyed.

  Kamele sighed, put her coffee cup aside, opened a search screen, and began to type.

  * * *

  Three of them were in the workroom: Kara on the remote, Clarence at an input station, making lists of parts they ought to have for the surface skin repairs based on the results of Kara’s scans and Bechimo’s interpretations. The repairs were considered necessary but not urgent, which was, Theo told herself, good news. They’d just have to be careful manuevering in dense atmosphere until the repairs were made and the damaged skin replaced.

  Theo stared morosely at her shipkey, thinking thoughts of color and flavors, while she rubbed the ache in the center of her forehead. She’d done three long search sessions inside the Struven unit, none of which, as far as she knew, had achieved anything like clarity.

  Joyita had been her guide during the last session, via commlink, since there weren’t any live screens inside the unit. With Joyita, and doing all thirty-six pipes top and bottom by aiming her concentration and listening, she’d thought she heard the sound or the word sock. The session before that, the second with Bechimo, she had gotten a definite hint of bright green and a whispered cord.

  Kara pushed away from the remote monitor with a sigh, pulling the googles off as she spun her stool to face Theo. She shook her head, and waved a hand toward the image showing on the monitor—exterior hull plates that would open to reveal the replacement slots for the Struven unit.