Quiet Knives

by Sharon Lee

  She'd thought before now that maybe it was time to start charting the course of her retirement. Not that she was old, though some days she felt every Standard she'd lived had been two. But she did have a certain responsibility to her ship, which could be expected to outlive a mere human's span—hell, it had already outlived two captains, and there wasn't any reason it wouldn't outlast her.

  She ought to take up a second—a couple of the cousins were hopeful, so she'd heard. The time to train her replacement was while she was still in her prime, so control could be eased over gradual, with her giving more of her attention to TerraTrade, while the captain-to-be took over ship duty, until one day the change was done, as painless as could be for everyone. That's how Berl took Skeedaddle over from Mam, who had gone back to the planet she'd been born to for her retired years, and near as Midj had ever seen on her infrequent visits, missed neither space nor ship.

  Berl, now Midj shook her head, her eyes watching the progress of the systems check across the board. In a universe without violence—in a universe without the Juntavas—Berl would've been standing captain yet, and his baby sister maybe trading off some other ship. Maybe she'd been running back-up on Skeedaddle, though that wasn't the likeliest scenario, her and her brother having gotten along about as well as opinionated and high-tempered sibs ever did.

  Still and all, he hadn't deserved what had come to him; and she hadn't wanted the ship that bad, having found a post that suited her on the Zar family ship. Suited her for a number of reasons, truth told, only one of them being the younger son, who came on as her partner once she'd understood Berl was really dead, and Skeedaddle was hers.

  Full circle.

  The board beeped; systems checked out clean, which was nothing more than she'd expected. She had a cold pad spoke for at the public yard; some meetings set up across the next couple days couple of independents on-port she still needed to get to regarding their views on TerraTrade's proposed "small trade" policies. She'd write that report before she lifted, send it on to Lezly, in case....

  In case.

  Well.

  She reached to the board, opened eyes and cars, began to tap in the code for the office at the public yard—and stopped, fingers frozen over the keypad.

  In the top left corner of the board, away from everything else on the board, a yellow light glowed. Pinbeam message waiting, that was.

  Most likely it was TerraTrade business, though she couldn't immediately call to mind anything urgent enough to require a 'beam. Still, it happened. That's why emergencies were called emergencies.

  She tapped the button, the message screen lit, sender ID scrolled—not a code she recognized, off-hand—and then the message.

  Situation's changed. Don't come. K

  The room was softly lit, his chair comfortable. For the moment, there were no restraints, other than those imposed by the presence of the woman across the table from him.

  "Where is the High Judge, Mr. Zar?"

  Her voice was courteous, even gentle, despite having asked this selfsame question at least six times in the last few hours.

  "Evaluation tour, is what he told me," he answered, letting some frustration show.

  "An evaluation tour," his interlocutor repeated, a note of polite disbelief entering her cool voice. "What sort of evaluation?"

  "Of the other judges," he said, and sighed hard, showing her his empty hands turned palm up on his knee. "He was going to visit them on the job, see how they were doing, talk to them. It's a regular thing he does, every couple Standards." That last at least was true.

  "I see." She nodded. He didn't know her name—she hadn't told him one, and she wasn't somebody he knew. She had a high, smooth forehead, a short brush of pale hair and eyes hidden by dark glasses. One of Grom Trogar's own—his sister, for all Kore knew or cared.

  What mattered was that she could make his life very unhappy, not to say short, unless he could convince her he was behind on brains and info.

  "It seems very odd to me," she said now, conversationally, "that the High Judge would embark on such a tour without his pilot."

  They'd been over this ground, too.

  "I'm a courier pilot," he said, keeping a visible lid on most of his frustration; "not a big ship pilot. I fly courier work, small traders, that kind of thing. I stay here, in case I'm needed."

  She hesitated; he could almost taste her weighing the question of the rest of the household's whereabouts against his own actions. Questions regarding his actions won out.

  "You went to the courier shed this afternoon, is that correct?"

  "Yes," he said, a little snappish.

  "Why?" Getting a little snappish, herself.

  "I had a 'beam from the judge, with instructions."

  "Instructions to lift?"

  "Yes."

  "And yet you didn't lift, Mr. Zar. I wonder why not."

  He shrugged, taking it careful here. "There was a guard on the door. It smelled wrong, so I went back to the house and sent a 'beam to the judge."

  "I see. Which guard?"

  He had no reason to protect the woman who'd been waiting for him. On the other hand, he had no reason to tell this woman the truth.

  "Nobody I'd seen before."

  She shook her head, but let that line go, too. Time enough to ask the question again, later.

  "Once more, Mr. Zar—where is the High Judge?"

  "I told you—on evaluation tour."

  "Where is Natesa the Assassin?"

  She was trying to throw him off. He gave an irritable shrug. "How the hell do I know? You think a courier assigns judges?"

  "Hm. And the destination of the lift you did not make?"

  Ile shook his head. "High Judge's business, ma'am. I'm not to disclose that without his say. If you want to 'beam him and get his OK..."

  She laughed, very softly, and leaned back in her chair, sliding her dark glasses off and holding them lightly between the first and middle fingers of her right hand. Her eyes were large and pale gray, pupils shrinking to pinpoints in the dim light.

  "You are good, Mr. Zar—my compliments. Unfortunately, I think you are not quite the dull fellow you play so well. We both know what happens next, I think? Unless there is something you wish to tell me?"

  He waited, a beat, two...

  She shook her head—regretfully, he thought, and extended a long hand to touch a button on her side of the table. The door behind her slid open, admitting two men, one carrying a case, the other a gun.

  The woman rose, languidly, and motioned them forward. Kore felt his stomach tighten.

  "Mr. Zar has decided that a dose of the drug is required to aid his memory, gentlemen. I'll be back in ten minutes."

  Don't come...

  Midj stared at the message, then laughed—the first real laugh she had in—gods, a Standard.

  "Don't come," she snorted, leaning back in the chair in the aftermath of her laugh. "Tell me another one, Kore."

  Shaking her head, she got up, went down the short hall to the galley and drew herself a cup of 'toot, black and sweet.

  Sipping, she walked back to the pilot's chamber and stood behind the chair, looking down at the message on the screen.

  "Now, of all the things he might've expected me to remember, wouldn't that have been one of 'em?" She asked her ship. There was no answer except for the smooth hum of the air filtering system. But, then, what other answer was needed? Skeedaddle knew Kore as well as she did.

  As well as she had.

  Twenty-six years ago, Midj Rolanni had been taken up as trader by Amin Zar, working beside the least of Amin's sons, one Korelan, who also had a head for trade. Their eighth or ninth stop, they were set to meet with one of the Zar cousins, who was a merchant on the port. Taking orbit, they collected their messages, including one from the cousin: "Don't come."

  Amin Zar, he took a look at that message, nodded, broke open the weapons locker and issued arms. They went down on schedule, whereupon Amin and the elder sibs disembarked, leaving
Kore, Midj, and young Berta in care of the ship.

  Several hours later, they were back, Amin carrying the cousin, and a few of the sibs bloodied—and Midj still had bad dreams about the lift outta there.

  After it all calmed down, she'd asked Kore why they'd gone in, when they'd clearly been warned away.

  And he'd laughed and told her that "Don't come," was Zar family code for "help."

  She sipped some more 'toot, took the half-empty cup over to the chute and dumped it in.

  The time, she thought, going back and sitting in her chair, had come to face down some truths.

  Truth Number One: She was a damn fool.

  Truth Number Two: So was the Korelan Zar she had known, twenty Standards ago. Who but a damn fool left the woman, the ship and the life that he loved for a long shot at changing the galaxy?

  And who but a damn fool let him go alone?

  What came into play now was those same twenty Standards and what they might have done to the man at his core.

  She noted that he never had said he'd changed his mind, in that first, brief call for her to come get him. The Kore she knew had never been a liar, preferring misdirection to outright falsehoods. It looked like he'd kept that tendency, and its familiarity had been the one thing that had convinced her the letter was genuine; St. Belamie giving her a second.

  And this—this was the third validation, and the most compelling reason to continue on the course she had charted, in case she was having any last minute doubts.

  "You gonna die for twenty Standards ago?" She asked herself, and heard her voice echo off the metal walls of her ship.

  You gonna turn your back on a friend when he needs your help? Her ship whispered in the silence that followed.

  No, she thought. No; she'd done that once, and it had stuck in her craw ever since.

  One good thing—she could go on her own time, now, since the way she saw it, "don't come" trumped St. Belamie.

  Smiling, she reached to the board and opened a line.

  "Tower, this is Skeedaddle, over at Vashon's Yard. How soon can I lift outta here?"

  There were restraints this time, uncomfortably tight, and a violent headache.

  So, he thought, laboriously. You wanted to make the guy with the gun use it, and he did. Quitcherbitchin.

  "He's back," a man's voice said breathlessly from somewhere to the left.

  He'd managed to land some blows of his own, which didn't comfort him much, since he was still alive.

  A man hove into view, his right check smeared with blood and a rising shiner on his left eye.

  Good, he thought, and then saw the injector. Not good.

  He tried to jerk away, but the cords only tightened, constricting his breathing—some kind of tangle-wire, then. He might be able to—

  "No, you don't, fly-boy," the man with the injector snarled, and grabbed his chin in an iron grip, holding him immobile while the cold nozzle came against his neck.

  There was a hiss, a sharp sting, and the injection was made. The man with the black eye released him and stepped back, grinning.

  He closed his eyes. Fool, he thought.

  The drug worked fast. The irritation of the wire was the first to fade from his perception, then the raging headache. He lost track of his feet, his fingers, his legs, his heartbeat, and, finally, his thoughts. He hung, limbless, without breath or heartbeat, a nameless clot of fog, without thought or volition.

  "What is your name?" A voice pierced the fog.

  "Korelan Zar,'' another voice answered, slowly. Inside the fog, something stirred, knew the voice and the name. Recognized, dimly, peril.

  "Good," said the first voice. "Where is the High Judge?"

  "I don't know," he heard himself say.

  "I see. Why were you going to your ship?"

  "Orders."

  "What orders?"

  He was listening in earnest now, interested in the answer; expecting to hear another, "I don't know...

  "Orders to get out, if it looked like going to hell." Well, he thought, inside the thinning fog, that certainly makes sense.

  "And things in your opinion were going to hell?"

  He'd said so, hadn't he? "Yes."

  "Ah," said the voice. That not being a question, he found himself speechless. Time passed; he felt the fog growing dense about him again.

  "What," the voice said, sharp enough to shred the fog and cut him where he hung, defenseless. "What was the text of the last message you sent to the High judge?"

  "Situation stable," he heard himself answer.

  "When was that?"

  "Four weeks ago, local."

  More silence; this time, he found he was able to concentrate and thin the fog further. He could feel the shadows of the tanglewire binding him to the chair; a breath of headache...

  "You were at the comm when we located you earlier this evening. Who did you send to?"

  A question had been asked; the drug compelled him to answer with the truth, but the truth had facets...

  "An old girlfriend."

  "Indeed. What is your old girlfriend's name?"

  The answer formed; he felt the words on his tongue, swelling, filling his mouth, his throat...

  "Impressive," the voice didn't-ask, releasing him. Exhausted, he fell back into the fog, felt it close softly around him, hiding the restraints, the pain, the sense of his own self.

  "What," the voice asked, soft now, almost as if it were part of the fog, "is the code of the last receiver to which you sent a pinbeam?"

  Calmly, his voice told out the code, while he sank deeper into the fog and at last stopped listening.

  She set Skeedaddle down in the general port, calling some minor attention to herself by requesting a hot pad. Tower was so bland and courteous she might have been back on Kago, which didn't comfort her as much as it maybe should have.

  Sighing, she levered out of the pilot's chair and stretched, careful of her back and shoulders, before moving down the hall.

  She pulled a pellet pistol from the weapons locker, and a needle gun—nothing more than a trigger, a spring and the needle itself. Completely illegal on most worlds, of course, though she'd come by it legal enough: It had been with Berl's body, when it came back, with his ship, to his sister.

  She slipped the needle gun into a hideaway pocket, and clipped the pistol to her belt. That done, she straightened her jacket, sealed the locker and went back to the galley for a cup of 'toot and a snack while the hull cooled.

  The fact that they hadn't killed him was—worrisome. That they kept him here, imprisoned, but not particularly misused, indicated that they thought there was more he could tell them.

  He'd had time to consider that; time to weigh whether he ought to file his last flight now and preserve what—and who—he could.

  The end of that line of consideration was simply that he wanted to live. His one urge toward suicide had failed and he couldn't say, considering present conditions, that he was sorry on that score. If it came down that he died in the line of doing something useful, then that was how it was. But to die uselessly, while there were still cards in play—no.

  That decision left open the question of what he could do of use, confined and maybe being used as bait. Not that the Judge would fall for bait, but Grom Trogar might not know that. In fact, Chairman Trogar might well see the Judge's concern for his household and his courier as a weakness to be exploited. Big believer in exploiting other people's weaknesses, was Mr. Trogar.

  Having the time, he thought about his life past, and what he might've done different, if he hadn't been your basic idealistic idiot. Put that way, he could see himself staying with Midj, leading a trader's prosperous life, raising up a couple of kids, maybe getting into politics. There were more ways to change the galaxy than the route he had chosen. And who was to say that change was the best thing?

  He'd been so sure.

  She had a plan, if you could call it that. Whoever had done the alias for the pinbeam Kore'd sent his last messa
ge from had been good, and if she'd started with no information, she'd right now be on a planet known as Soltier, somewhere over in the next quadrant. Knowing that Kore was on Shaltren made the exercise of tracking the 'beam something easier, and she thought she had a reasonable lock on his last location.

  Nothing guaranteed that he'd still be at that location, of course, but it was really the only card she had, unless she wanted to go calling on the chairman, which she was holding in reserve as her Last Stupid Idea.

  For her first trick, she needed a cab.

  There was a cab stand at the end of the street, green-and-white glow-letters spelling out Robo Cab! Cheap! Quick! Reliable!

  Right.

  She leaned in, hit the call button, and walked out to the curb to wait.

  Traffic wasn't in short supply this planet-noon, and the port looked prosperous enough. If you didn't know you were on galactic crime headquarters, in fact, it looked amazingly normal.

  Up the street, a cab cut across three lanes of traffic, angling in toward her position, the green-and-white Robo Cab logo bright in the daylight. It pulled up in front of her, the door opened and she stepped in.

  Mistake.

  "Good afternoon, Captain Rolanni," said the woman pointing the gun at her. "Let's have lunch."

  The door snapped shut and the cab accelerated into traffic.

  It was going to take a bit to disable the camera, but he thought he had a workable notion, there. The hard part was going to be getting out the door. After that, he'd have to deal with the details: scoping out where, exactly, he was, and how, exactly, to get out.

  He'd read somewhere that it was the duty of prisoners taken in war to attempt to escape, in order, so he guessed, to make the other side commit more resources to keeping their prisoners where they belonged. It had occurred to him at the time that the efficient answer to that might be to shoot all the troublemakers in hand, and institute a policy of taking no prisoners. On the other hand, Mr. Trogar having erred on the side of prisoner-taking, he supposed there was a certain usefulness to confounding the home guard.