A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  “No, Gelasaar. Never again.”

  o0o

  “Anaris does not believe a person’s destiny can be determined by a knot,” the Panarch said. “And he is right.”

  The others drew in around the table at which Gelasaar sat. So he decided to spare him, thought Caleb. I would like to have heard that conversation.

  The Panarch spread his hands on the table. As he continued speaking, one finger twitched occasionally. “I think we all agree, as rational beings must, that one cannot plan one’s destiny, nor escape the consequences of one’s actions.”

  His voice was measured, without any emphasis save the normal cadence of Douloi speech; the meaning overlaid on his words was carried by the movement of a finger. We must plan escape.

  “When I was young,” said Mortan Kree, carrying on the conversation in the same fashion, “I thought I could best destiny, but then it seemed I had all the time in the world.” When best time?

  Their time together on the Samedi had made this mode of communication second nature, so much so that the camouflaging words dropped out of memory almost as soon as uttered. Caleb suppressed a grin at the irony of the situation. This was one benefit of political training he’d never expected: that the ability to effortlessly generate words without meaning would someday be his only means of meaningful discourse. Then he bent his attention to the conversation.

  “(On) (the way) (down) (or) (on the surface),” said Carr. “(Can’t overcome) (whole) (ship).”

  “(I agree). (Short journey); (mixed) (people),” said Gelasaar. They’d already discussed the mixture of Dol’jharians and Rifters on the ship, and decided that Anaris’s escort was designed to protect him and control the Rifters, relying on the destroyer’s crew for technical know-how in all areas save computing, where the Dol’jharians could not afford to cede control.

  “(They) (will) (keep us) (in) (lock), (gravity) (standard),” Matilde Ho replied. It was unlikely that the shuttle had independent gravitors, and the Rifter crew wouldn’t stand for heavy gee.

  “(Heavy) (ones) (aim) (high),” said Yosefina Paerakles. “(Maybe) (yield) (enough) (time)?” The Dol’jharians, used to a twenty percent higher acceleration, would tend to shoot high under standard gee.

  Slowly the plan evolved. They had seen in the eyes of their captors nothing but disdain for their aged prisoners—Gelasaar had told them that of the Dol’jharians probably only Anaris knew of the power of the Ulanshu Kinesics. Soon they had all the elements but one.

  “(One) (chance) (only),” said Kree.

  “(We need) (surprise),” Carr rumbled, rubbing his chest and wincing. Once again, Caleb wondered what they had done to him. His every movement seemed weighted by pain. “(Use) (captors’) (superstition),” he continued, coughing.

  The Panarch looked a question at him. Padraic met his gaze squarely, “(Willing) (death) (and words of) (their) (native tongue).” The admiral shook his head at the protest in Gelasaar’s face, and looked around at all of them.

  “(Your) (freedom) (is the) (anodyne) (I seek). (Death) (is a) (longed-for) (friend).” He coughed again, a painful, tearing sound.

  The Panarch nodded slowly.

  There was nothing more to be said.

  SIX

  Emmet Fasthand stomped onto the bridge and glared at his crew. To his surprise, and grudging satisfaction, no one returned his gaze. Even Moob looked away, uncharacteristically subdued.

  Maybe that Karushna-whatsis wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. He had made the mistake, long ago, of picking a tough crew, in the hopes of making the big kill. It had been profitable, but they’d turned out to be so tough the only way he’d been able to control them—barely—was his rule about instant trips to vacuum if anyone wore a boswell aboard the ship. And he made sure they knew he had sensors deployed everywhere.

  So he thoroughly reveled in the knowledge that tough as they were, the Dol’jharians had proved to be tougher.

  He laughed, enjoying the startled looks from the scum-sucking blits, and sat down in the command pod. A costly lesson, perhaps, but now, just maybe, if they survived this voyage, they’d be manageable enough to get him somewhere in the evolving Rifter fleet hierarchy. And if not, after this run he’d be able to afford to hire in a new crew that he could dominate.

  Moob drew her breath in audibly, her tattooed skin puffed with lacerations. She’d win rank points on Rifthaven with her Draco clan for her battle—the only one, Fasthand figured, to claim anything positive from their taste of Dol’jharian custom.

  He grimaced, remembering Hestik lying with broken neck and spine in the corridor outside the Dol’jharian territory, and one of the engine crew stuffed, mangled almost beyond recognition, under a console in the aft rec room. And Sundiver, lying in her bunk, face to the wall, unwilling, or unable, to speak.

  Fasthand smiled. Just wish I’d been able to get imagers in on the fun Anaris had with her. Then the countdown on the main screen caught his eyes and his enjoyment abruptly evaporated: EMERGENCE MINUS 23:08:40.

  Gehenna. His tension returned in full measure. At least that chatzer Anaris and his slimy little Bori hadn’t specified an approach. He’d play it safe: twenty light-minutes up and over the fourth planet.

  Safe. A bitter laugh corroded his throat and he suppressed it. The Panarchists had to know by now, after that hyperwave broadcast—they had spies everywhere. The first thing they would have done would be to dispatch a battlecruiser—maybe several cruisers—to the Gehenna system, to lie in wait.

  The hatch behind him hissed open, and Morrighon entered.

  What is he doing here? The Bori had always avoided the bridge before. Was this more evidence of the shift in power the Dol’jharian chatz-war had precipitated? Had he participated? Fasthand glanced at Tat. She didn’t look bruised or battered. Had Morrighon caught one of her cousins?

  Fasthand’s speculations died as Anaris’s secretary walked up to his pod. Despite his twisted frame, Morrighon moved as though he owned the bridge and everyone on it. “Captain. My lord has instructions for the approach to Gehenna.”

  Instantly enraged, Fasthand started to order him off the bridge, but his protest stuck in his throat as Morrighon continued. “We have learned that the Gehennan system is warded by a hyperbolic fivespace distortion some thirty light-minutes in extent, which infallibly destroys any ship that approaches, whether in skip or under geeplane. The only safe approach is along the plane of the ecliptic.”

  Disbelief was Fasthand’s first reaction. “What kind of trickery is this?” he snarled.

  Morrighon said, “It appears to be the trickery by which the Panarchists have protected this planet for centuries.”

  The whining voice was in dead earnest. The nausea boiling in Fasthand’s guts echoed in the greenish cast to Lassa’s face, Hestik’s replacement at the nav console. We’re set to emerge ten light-minutes inside the killing zone.

  Morrighon evidently saw his distress, for he smiled thinly. “You are therefore directed to emerge at plus thirty-five light-minutes, well outside the Knot, and approach the fourth planet along the plane of the ecliptic under geeplane, using your fiveskip only in case of dire emergency. Is that understood?”

  Something was familiar, but right now Fasthand had to get rid of Morrighon. He could sense the fear sweeping through the bridge crew. The twisted little chatzer is doing this on purpose.

  “Is that all you can tell me?” Fasthand snarled.

  “That is all you need to know,” Morrighon replied. “Unless you wish me to inform my lord of your dissatisfaction with his orders?” He left the bridge without waiting for Fasthand’s response.

  After a brief, shocked silence, the crew erupted in a barrage of curses and horrified speculation, scrambling Fasthand’s thoughts as he tried to identify what it was Morrighon had said that seemed so important.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he shrieked finally. “You stupid, Shiidra-sucking deviants! This is just what that Bori slug wants.”

  The uproar su
bsided.

  “Lassa, reprogram for thirty-five out and along,” he commanded, noting with a fresh surge of anger that she was already doing so, obeying Morrighon rather than waiting for him to issue the order. I’d like to tie that little chatzer’s legs in a knot and finish the job the Dol’jharians started.

  “The Knot.” He’d heard the emphasis on that word. That was what his mind had seized on, but why?

  He had spoken aloud, and Lassa looked up from her console.

  “You like holo-games, Captain?” Her voice was conciliatory; she’d apparently realized her error in not waiting for his order.

  “Holo-games?” The sense of familiarity trembled on the edge of dissolution at the distraction.

  “Yeah. There’s a real famous battle-sim called the Knot, based on a Naval Academy setup—”

  “The Knot!” He shouted the word. “Chatz! It’s real.” Fasthand’s voice trailed off as he realized, first, where he’d heard the phrase before—not Lassa’s game, but in a data dump from the MinervaNet he’d picked up long ago—and second, the chilling, damnable cleverness of the Panarchist government in leaving the secret of Gehenna in plain sight like that, thus ensuring that it would be overlooked for eight hundred years.

  “Gehenna is the Knot,” he said, his tone resonant with wonder. “It must be.” He tapped with a controlled frenzy at the console; the main screen flickered with a dizzying riot of images as the computer searched, then stabilized on an image of a reddish hyperbola with a blue-white sun at its center.

  “That’s it,” said Lassa. “I’ve played it a lot. Problem is, the Knot’s unstable.” She stopped, her expression changing. “No way,” she said, her voice shaking. “That’s worse than hitting radius in skip.”

  “Shut up, you piss-faced pult,” Moob shouted, her temper flaring. “It’s only a chatzing game.” The bravado in her voice was painfully apparent.

  “No,” said Fasthand wearily, “it’s not just a game. It’s an incredibly detailed simulation from the Naval Academy that we have to assume is the Gehenna system.” He glanced at Lassa. At least one thing was going right—against all odds he had a navigator who knew the Gehenna system.

  If the damn game is accurate. It would be just like the Panarchists to throw some inaccurate—and deadly—details into the game, just in case. But he had the real simulation in the Samedi’s databanks.

  He turned to the navigator. “What do you mean, unstable?”

  She returned his gaze, her eyes stricken. “It—the game. I mean, the Knot—it’s sensitive to gravitational impulses. You can use the fiveskip, for short hops; you can fire skipmissiles; if you have a battlecruiser, you can even fire your ruptors.” She swallowed and motioned at the screen. “But every time you do, the hyperbola flattens out a little and the transverse axis shortens.” She stopped speaking.

  “And?” said Fasthand impatiently, scanning his data to match it against her recollection of the game. So far, the game seemed an accurate rendition of the Naval simulation.

  “And,” continued Lassa, “eventually, the two lobes meet, and you don’t come out again.” She emitted a semi-hysterical snicker. “The Knot’s got some killer animations there—in one of ’em, the Knot pulls your skeleton out through your blungehole.”

  With a shriek of rage Moob spun around her pod and leapt toward Lassa, a knife materializing in her hand. Fasthand’s reaction was instantaneous. He couldn’t afford to lose this navigator, not now. He jumped up and palmed his sleeve-jac; only at the last moment did he lower his aim. He couldn’t afford to lose his best scantech, either, not with the prospect of a battlecruiser lying in wait.

  The pulse of plasma scored the deck at Moob’s feet, splattering her trousered legs with flecks of white-hot metal. She dropped the knife with a howl of pain and slapped frantically at the smoldering cloth. Then her snarl of rage turned sulky when she saw Fasthand’s resolve. Fasthand steeled himself and did not look away from her mad gaze.

  Moob shrugged at last, and turned away, muttering, “Stupid suck needed some sense scared into her—no good to us if she goes all jelly-bag on us. I wouldn’t have hurt her bad.”

  “No,” said Fasthand, trying very hard not to let his voice shake. “You wouldn’t have.” He stood unmoving until Moob returned to her console; she did not attempt to retrieve her knife.

  Lassa watched, her back stiff, her eyes dark with hatred.

  Slowly the atmosphere of the bridge returned to something closer to normal. Fasthand sat down and stared at the Knot, portrayed in chilling clarity on the main screen. What other secrets might there be, waiting, like this one, to blast the unwary with sudden agonizing death? Emmet Fasthand felt very old—he’d been on the Riftskip too long, and he feared his luck was running out.

  Not yet, it isn’t. We found out in time.

  This time.

  o0o

  A short time later, Tat cautiously approached the ready room, not knowing what to expect. The captain’s summons had been terse.

  Everyone who’d gone out for the Karusch’na Rahali and lived through it was in a vile temper, moving stiffly as if with pain. She’d heard about Hestik and the drivetech; she hadn’t heard anything about what had happened to Sundiver after she went for Anaris, except the obvious fact she hadn’t been seen since. And Moob . . . that scene on the bridge had frightened Tat almost senseless; she’d never seen the Draco so wild, yet the captain had forced her to back down. Tat and her cousins had managed a precarious accommodation to conditions on the Samedi; now everything was changing.

  The hatch opened and she peeked into the ready room. No one was there except Fasthand. He sat facing the door, a jac on the table in front of him. He motioned her over.

  “I’m changing my rules against wearing boz’ls on my ship. I want you to wear yours,” the captain said, his long, unlovely face twisted in a peculiar grimace midway between worry and anger. “Even to sleep.”

  Tat nodded.

  Fasthand flickered a look at her face, then away. He never met anyone’s eyes if he could possibly avoid it; that was part of what had made his face-down of Moob so startling. But that hadn’t lasted long. Now he seemed more ferret-like than ever.

  “I don’t trust that Shiidra-suck Morrighon not to somehow rizz our comp,” he went on. “You are to work night and day on breaking his codes. We’ll put you on sick call—no one’s to know.”

  She nodded again, wondering who would take her place in the already depleted prime bridge crew.

  He frowned. “Tell Lar he’s got to cover you. Less comment that way.”

  Tat knew what he meant. No one can tell one Bori from another. It wasn’t that they looked alike, it was more that no one bothered unless they wanted something. Annoying, but now was not the time to lodge a protest on Lar’s behalf.

  “Keep me posted on whatever you learn,” he said. Then he looked at his chrono and winced. “Twenty hours now.”

  Tat ducked her head and scudded out the door, relieved to get away from Fasthand. Always tense and strange, he’d been manic since the Karusch’na, and she was afraid the information about Gehenna would eventually push him over the edge.

  Hunching her shoulders, Tat sped for the relative safety of her cabin. With her door personal-locked, she poured herself into the computer system, exploring its perimeter with excruciating care. Patient feelers of code probed at anomalies; at last, she discovered by accident that Morrighon, with a deadly cleverness, had masked most of his data by camouflaging it as scavenged dataspace.

  Meticulous and slow—for she found guardian phages zapping back and forth, looking for invaders—she tried to find how he’d managed it. Breaking it would be even harder.

  Finally, exhausted almost to the point of recklessness, she forced herself to withdraw and to shut down her system. Her hand moved reluctantly, and her burning eyes stared at the now-blank screen, seeing afterimages flickering there.

  If she went back in now, she’d do something foolish and get caught. It was time to try another wa
y.

  She turned in her pod, surprised at the ache in her neck. A glance at the chrono shocked her: she’d been at it for nine straight hours. It was 03:45.

  She got to her feet, and a huge yawn forced its way up from her insides. One longing glance at her nightclothes, then she rubbed her eyes and marched to the door.

  Emergence was nearly on top of them. She shared Fasthand’s fears of what the Dol’jharians could do if they controlled the ship’s functions. Not to mention Fasthand—he’s crazy-bad enough to force me out a lock.

  The spurt of fear gave her a semblance of energy, enough to move her to the rec room, which she was thankful to find empty. She called up a mug of hot caf and stood with its warmth cradled in her hands, the steam tickling her nose, as she thought.

  It was time to do some social data-diving, in real time. Only, how to flush Morrighon without him knowing he was being flushed?

  The idea of stepping into the Dol’jharian area gave her the shillies. And she didn’t dare run a locate—he’d know that immediately, of course. She had long since built safeguards for herself against tracers.

  But . . . her tired eyes ranged over the galley console, and she took her underlip between her teeth. There was one other route: find out where he’d been and what he’d ordered.

  Some quick tapping, and as a list windowed up, her heart began to hammer painfully.

  ID 121-SD; roufou-rice, geel soup, caf/snithi, 03:39.

  Bori food.

  And—she glanced back to make sure—he’d ordered it from right where she stood, instead of the rec room nearest the Dol’jharian area.

  Which suggested he didn’t want to eat it in his room. And—she was sure—he never ate with his overlords.

  So that left the rest of the ship. She paced back and forth. Think, think! It would be so easy, so convenient, if he’d just take it down to the hidey that Tat and her cousins used sometimes, with the gees changed so it seemed—

  She stopped. Why not? He wasn’t in his room, or he’d have ordered his food on the other side of the ship. And he had never been sighted eating in the rec areas, where crew normally ate.