“And remember that someone in this bright galaxy sold us out and tried to kill everyone in the fleet,” the Pilot-Principal added. “The people who did that are still out there somewhere. And we’re still sus-Dariv—we don’t take charity from anyone.”
“Meanwhile,” said Winceyt, “send a narrow beam to the location of that last signal. Tell them who we are, and say that we want a palaver.”
“What code?” asked the communications officer.
“None. We don’t have any friends out here.”
By the time Kiefen Diasul’s hired ship landed in the docking bay of the asteroid base, Vai was riding in the copilot’s seat, with Kief standing close behind her. The seating arrangement was an uneasy one, made even more so by her awareness that she had a madman with a handgun at her back. She knew that Kief bore her no malice—not that he truly bore anyone malice, not even Arekhon—but she also knew that he was, in his own polite and reasonable way, completely insane.
Her first sight of the sus-Radal base, however, was almost overwhelming enough to take her mind off her problems altogether. She was impressed at how close it had already come to matching the rendered image she’d seen in Thel’s office. Parts of it were still being built: during the approach she saw a number of hard-vacuum aiketen moving about, at work transforming the base’s outer surface into something like natural rock. The docking bay itself was huge, as if someone had taken the entire Ninglin Spaceport landing field and shoved it into an enormous vaulted cave.
“They hailed us on sus-Radal frequencies,” the pilot said as the ship settled onto its landing legs. “Well, I’m sus-Radal by current contract, and I’ve got those. So I answered up and asked for permission to land or dock or whatever the local custom might be, and they gave me a beacon to home on. Slick as you like.”
The pilot was talking mostly to Vai; he’d plainly realized by now that she knew more about starships and piloting than his employer did. Vai wondered if he’d also realized by now that his employer was crazy.
If he doesn’t know, she thought, there’s no point in scaring him to death by telling him.
“I’m sorry that I can’t tell you exactly how long we’ll be here,” Kief said to the pilot. “I’m expecting someone, and I can’t leave until my business with him is finished.”
“Fine with me,” said the pilot. “There’s something strange going on outside—a bunch of ships jumping and signaling like crazy in a couple of different codes—and I’d just as soon stay in here out of the way until they get themselves sorted out.”
Damn it, thought Vai. It’s a battle.
For the first time, she felt true anger at Kief. She should have been out where she could talk to the sus-Radal before all this started, not locked up in a cargo hold; she’d been counting on using her family connections one last time to get safe harbor for the sus-Dariv ships. She felt anger at herself as well: The plans and files she’d taken from Thel’s office along with the secret chart had only mentioned crew transports going back and forth, not armed guardships, and she had believed them.
You believed them because Thel never mentioned guardships when he told you about his secret base, she said to herself. And Thel never used to leave out things like that when he told you about his plans.
Kief’s voice brought her back from her interior recriminations. “We’ll wait for Arekhon down on the floor of the docking bay,” he said. “It should be an excellent place for a working.”
“It could be days and days before ’Rekhe shows up,” she protested.
“I don’t think so. The threads of the working are too tight for him to be that far away.” Kief turned to leave the courier’s bridge, then stopped and looked back at Vai. “Come on. If we have a few hours of free time, we can use them to find this place’s infirmary. A proper set of medical aiketen can take better care of your arm than I was able to with a handbook and a kit-in-a-box.”
“We have a message coming in,” Eastward-to-Dawning’s Command-Ancillary said to Captain Hafdorwen.
“What code?”
“None.”
“It could be from anyone, then,” Hafdorwen said. “What does it say?”
“Sir,” said the Command-Ancillary, looking startled. “They identify themselves as sus-Dariv.”
“Why not invite the sus-Peledaen to the party, too?” the captain demanded rhetorically. “It looks like Lord Natelth’s using what’s left of his new wife’s people in order to take down our family as well.”
“I don’t know,” the Command-Ancillary said dubiously. “They’re not requesting anything other than that we identify ourselves.”
The captain shook his head. “They want to see how much we have out here, and they want to take or destroy the station.”
“For what purpose?”
“For all intents and purposes, they’re sus-Peledaen. This station is an asset, and they want either to take it or to deprive the fleet-family of its use.”
“Damn,” said the Command-Ancillary. “They sure picked the right time for an attack, if that’s the case. The station’s too close to completion for us to abandon it and start over on a new one, but not close enough to defend itself or go into complete camouflage mode.”
“Passive shows minimum five ships,” the Dawning’s Pilot-Principal said. “Three of them talking among themselves, unknown code.”
“They’re getting a fix on us,” Hafdorwen said. “Rig two transmitters on different frequencies. We’re going to play some games.”
“The intruders have turned,” reported the Pilot-Principal. “Their new axis of advance is toward our current location.”
“Let’s draw them off from the station,” said the captain.
The Command-Ancillary looked shocked. “And leave the station unguarded?”
“You have a better idea?” Hafdorwen asked. “We can’t fight five ships. We’d be hard-pressed to fight two. No, listen—what I want to do is transmit a message to myself, drop into the Void and back out again, make a reply to myself, do another in-and-out of the Void, and then send a message again. Jump back and forth, sending a message on a different frequency each time, so it’ll look like two ships transmitting.”
“That’ll be tough, Captain.”
“Do it,” Hafdorwen ordered. “The family expects more of us than merely making the attempt.”
21:
SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE SUS-DARIV GUARDSHIP GARDEN-OF-FAIR-BLOSSOMS SUS-RADAL GUARDSHIP EASTWARD-TO-DAWNING SUS-PELEDAEN GUARDSHIP COLD-HEART-OF-MORNING NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER: SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE NEARSPACE
The whole board’s lighting up,” Command-Tertiary Yerris said to Fleet-Captain Winceyt, aboard Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms.”Lots of communications coming in. We can’t break them.”
“Then get me lines of position on them,” Winceyt said. “And everyone look sharp. One way or the other, before we sleep again this will all be over.”
“We have a ripple,” Yerris said. “Dropout. More ships coming in.”
“They’re getting reinforcements,” Winceyt said. “Where?”
“By a cluster of large asteroids, Sector Three Green.”
“We’re working on that problem,” said the Garden’s Pilot-Principal. Her eyes were hot and eager—she at least, Winceyt reflected, had a good reason for hoping to find someone to fight. “Using the stored data—if we assume anything that vanished after the second squawk was a ship—we have a number of tracks, converging over there. Confirm Sector Three Green.”
“Put a beacon in that direction,” Winceyt ordered. “Mark it. Now tell me more about those people who are out there doing the transmitting.”
“Working … working … got them!” exclaimed the Pilot-Principal. “Their locations are jinking all over the place. I can’t make a course or speed on either one, but we have a bunch of signals from locations TA-38 and RN-22.”
“I want everything you can pull out of those numbers,” Winceyt said. “And while you’re working on that, I want to see where everyone w
as heading. The ones who went dark. Signal to Sweetwater-Running, Blue-Hills-Distant, and Path-Lined-with-Flowers. Guide on me. Now turn toward, as soon as you have a position plotted.”
Aboard Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter, Arekhon and Karil Estisk had stood watch-and-watch for the duration of the transit to the Void-mark on Iulan Vai’s chart. Arekhon had remained firm in his conviction that the Daughter needed to reach that position with all possible speed, and Karil gave up arguing with him on the first day. Now Arekhon sat sipping at yet another cup of uffa—at least the Daughter’s original sus-Radal owners hadn’t stinted on that vital part of the ship’s stores, for all that it had gotten stale. He was leaning back in the Daughter’s copilot’s seat, with Karil in the pilot’s seat next to him.
“I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,” she said, with a nod toward the cup in his hand. “If we ever get trade going across the interstellar gap and your people start importing proper cha’a, the uffa growers of Eraasi will all be going on the dole.”
“I grew up with it,” Arekhon said. “I still remember my first cup. Did I ever tell you about it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I was twelve, and there was some kind of get-together going on in the lower reaches of the house. It was late at night, but I wasn’t sleepy. Na’e was head of the family already by then—our parents had died a long time before—and he and Isa were down there with the rest of them. So I got dressed, and walked down.”
He paused briefly as Karil touched a dial, making sure of the reading, and then continued when she glanced his way again.
“I went down to the forecourt, all candlelit, with quiet groups of adults standing about, and a low murmur of conversation going on. Walked right in, and stood against a wall. I knew I didn’t belong there; I knew someone would notice and send me off to bed. And I’d be so embarrassed. Publicly humiliated. And my hands were so empty. An aiketh was passing by, with a tray of uffa cups, each with a warmer. I reached out, and picked one up. If I had a cup of uffa in my hand, I belonged, right? Well, there it was, and it was warm in my hand. So to make it look like I belonged, like I was as sophisticated as the rest, I raised the cup to my lips and I took a drink.”
“How did you like it?” Karil asked.
“Thought I was going to die,” Arekhon said. “It was awful. Sour and scalding and nasty-tasting all at once. But if I sputtered, if I spit it out, if I vomited, everyone would have looked at me, right? But I was all grown up; I belonged there. I took another drink. And another. Until the glass was empty. I set it on a tray beside the door as I left. And that was the first time I drank uffa.”
“And the second?”
“Nothing as dramatic. I was a fleet-apprentice by then, and I needed to stay awake.”
“Ah.” Karil smiled. “We’re coming close to drop-time. Want to warn the rest?”
“I suppose I should.” Arekhon switched on the amplified circuit to the rest of the ship. “We’ll be dropping out to realspace in a few minutes,” he said. “Stand by the engines. Depending on how well Vai’s chart has guided us in, we should be at a sus-Radal base.”
“There,” Karil said, not looking at Arekhon, her concentration on the V-meter in front of her. She twisted the silver knob below it until the two glowing green sides of the V just met, but did not overlap. Then she pressed the Lock button. She closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders to release the tension. Then she opened her eyes again and glanced out of the pilothouse window to her right. The grey mist swirled past.
“After dropout?” Arekhon tried to make the question sound casual, but his own tension came through in it despite his effort. He forced himself to relax and lean back in the copilot’s chair.
Karil moved three sliders to the right-hand end of their tracks. “This ship has the beacons set to identify us to the sus-Radal.”
As always, when she spoke in the language of the homeworlds, her speech was strongly accented. Arekhon would not have recognized the family-name if the context had not helped him, even though she was fluent enough to make herself understood on Eraasi if she needed to.
How does my Entiboran sound to her? he wondered. He thought of the accent that Maraganha wore on her words—more of a harsh growl, not the elongated vowels Karil’s An-Jemaynan dialect added to Hanilat-Eraasian. It struck him that he’d never heard the Void-walker speak in her native tongue. The thought of speech brought another thought to mind.
“If someone comes up on comms,” Arekhon said, “let me answer them. Going by the charts, we’re going to be dropping out a long way from anywhere.”
“Well then.” Karil was looking at the dropout timer. It faded from violet to yellow. “Here we go.” She pulled back on the transit lever until it clicked into its safety slot.
The shift from Void-transit to normal space was as disconcerting as ever; Arekhon shuddered, and the light of the stars blazed up outside of the cockpit windows. Karil looked into the position-plotting scope. She paused, then adjusted the scope’s brightness and focus, as if not believing what was displayed. “This may be a long way from anywhere, but there’s a goodly number of sus-Radal ships here just the same. One big one radiating, and they’re … my goodness. Jumping.”
“Who else is out here?”
“Can’t say … want me to broadcast an Any Ship message?”
“No. Stay quiet; stay dark. See if you can find that base. Are the charts good here?”
“Oh, the charts show the same position as realspace,” Karil said. “This wasn’t that far a jump.”
“Then get us to the base. I don’t want to get in the way of whatever’s going on. And I do want to find Kiefen Diasul before he tears apart the working.”
“Well … the base should be over in that … looks like that large asteroid is probably it. Recognition beacon?”
“Yes.”
Karil reached to the overhead control panels, and turned a rotary switch. It made a clicking sound.
“Response … and wait a minute.” The emission-warning light was glowing, and an alert tone was coming from the bulkhead speaker. “Someone out there is using fire control.”
“Get to the base,” Arekhon repeated. “Are they searching for us?”
“No, that evaluates as a side lobe.”
“Switch on cloaking, then, and move us in.”
“That cloaking thing you guys have isn’t a hundred percent,” Karil warned him. “I’d call it thirty-five, tops, on a good day. More of a hardware enthusiast’s fantasy than anything workable.”
“Use it anyway,” Arekhon said. “If going in cloaked manages to make us thirty-five percent less obvious, I’m all for it. If there are weapons around, that is.”
“If there are weapons around?” Karil laughed. “To judge by the detection board there’s nothing but.” She ran a finger down the line of switches marked Cloak. “You got it.”
“Now, how about getting me a list of everyone out here, and positions, and all that.”
“Do I look like a fully manned bridge crew?” Karil swung her chair around until she faced Arekhon. She gestured with her hand to take in the whole of the pilothouse. “Does this look like a cruiser?”
“I have utmost faith in you.”
Karil sighed and turned back to the control console. “I expect double pay for this,” she muttered, and started scribbling notes on a scratchpad.
Arekhon noticed that he’d never turned off the intraship amplified circuit. He spoke to the audio pickup. “Maraganha, could you come up here? I need your talents.”
He sat back. His uffa mug was empty. Well, he could get more later. Right now he needed to get to a place where he was safe, and where the crew was safe, then see if he could link back up with Iulan Vai. She’d have a handle on what was happening. She always did.
“Somebody out there is shooting,” Karil said, looking up from the plotting scope. “It isn’t just ranging and marking anymore. And … yep, it looks like someone took a hit. Your friend Vai dropped us into a
hot war zone.”
“Damn,” Arekhon said. “I thought I wasn’t going to make a habit of that.”
“Yeah,” Karil said. “Well, as long as it doesn’t spread to the galaxy in general, I’m happy. I left all my stuff back on Entibor.”
Arekhon sighed. The threads of the great working stretched out across the starfield before him, and all of them were dipped in blood. From the moment when Garrod had walked through the Void to Entibor, and all of the Demaizen Circle had joined to pull him back, the great working had claimed them all, and taken their lives to give itself strength.
“The universe will come together,” he said. As he spoke he was uncomfortably aware that he wasn’t telling all of the truth.
This is where I earn my outer-family adoption, Hafdorwen thought. Command of Eastward-to-Dawning and the right to call himself Hafdorwen syn-Radal were a great honor and a doorway to future advancement, but they came with a price attached and now it was time to pay up.
Hafdorwen looked at the color bar on the main display console. It showed more ships coming in, the knot in space-time that indicated a dropout from the Void. This one had arrived near the under-construction base.
“How many do they have now?” he asked.
“Minimum five,” his Command-Ancillary replied. “Maximum—who knows who hasn’t dropped out yet, or who’s dropped out and isn’t talking?”
“Let’s see if we can make it minimum four,” Hafdorwen said to the Command-Ancillary. “Transmit multiple frequencies, in the clear, asking them to state their name and business.”
“Is that wise?” she asked. “We already know why they’re here.”
“The request will come from a chase-and-go-home,” Hafdorwen said. “Launch one with the message, then do a quick in-and-out Void-transit to put us astern of them. Put me in their shadow zone, so I can see how they respond to the challenge.”
“Preparing chaser, aye,” said the Command-Ancillary. “Captain, you’re made of stone.”
A Working of Stars Page 32
