by Sharon Lee
“You ascribe some other reason?”
“I believe that the Light enjoys the terror of its victim in the instant that he knows himself to be doomed.”
“In fact, you would argue that the Light is a sadist?”
“I would argue that the Light is evil, Mentor, as much as it goes against all of my training.”
“You are a Scout?” Tocohl asked, breaking her silence, even as she initiated a search among her archives.
He turned to her and bowed.
“Lady, I was a Scout. For a time after, I was a courier pilot, which is how I came to be here.”
The searcher pinged. Yes, she had thought as much.
“Forgive me if I am impertinent,” she said. “I had thought you had the clan face, but I ran a match to be certain. You are, I think, Jen Sin yos’Phelium, who was recorded in the Diaries as lost during the clan wars.”
He bowed again.
“Found out. But tell me, if you may, how you have access to Korval’s Diaries, Lady. Was the Dragon vanquished and all of our secrets published abroad?”
“Korval…did not prevail, but we did survive. I access the Diaries as the right of a daughter of the clan.”
He tipped his head, polite disbelief sketched in the shadows of his face.
“Forgive me. I do not recall that Lorlin looks to Korval.”
“With the delm’s kiss, it becomes so.”
She thought he did not believe her, but she had at least amused him, so that he smiled and extended a hand.
“Well met, then, cousin.”
“Well met, cousin,” she answered and placed her fine detail gripper lightly on his palm.
“And you come partnered with Mentor Yo, whose avowed purpose is to bring Tinsori Light to the Lyre Institute. Does Korval align thus?”
“I am here as an observer, and to ensure that…harm is not done.”
He laughed, as bitter as burnt tea.
“A noble goal, cousin. I wish you may truly ensure, from this moment forward, that no harm is done.”
He turned then and looked to Inki.
“Mentor, is there any other way in which I may serve you?”
“Light Keeper, I am for the moment content,” Inki said, bowing gratitude. “Thank you for your patience and the gift of your knowledge.”
“Allow me to use that coin to urge you once again to put an end to Tinsori Light.”
“I will assess the situation,” Inki told him, “and be guided by my training and experience.”
Jen Sin bowed his head.
“Of course you will, Mentor. It is what I, myself, have done. I bid you both good e’en.”
III
Inki had curled up in the bunk and gone to sleep after Jen Sin left them. Tocohl had decreased the room feed priority to five and assigned the rest of her attention to research and implementation. The watch log pinged for her attention when the assault against her shields had ceased and had not resumed for five minutes.
Tinsori Light had either been defeated by her defenses, or he had finished mapping her weaknesses and had withdrawn to formulate a plan.
Tocohl wished she knew which it was. Taking Jen Sin’s data as more true than false, it was likely the latter.
There was another ping when Inki woke and swung off the bunk with energy.
“Good morning, Pilot Tocohl!” she said brightly. “Do I find you well?”
“As well as I may be,” Tocohl said cautiously. “Tinsori Light felt it necessary to test my shields while you rested.”
“Ah, and was he repulsed?”
“He was. If he had requested that we establish a communication protocol or asked any question…but there was only the assault.”
Inki sighed.
“Definitely, we must work on courtesy and what is due to other autonomous persons. He has forgotten the niceties along the march of years and in the peculiarity of his situation. It shall be mended, in good time. Indeed, we may make a beginning this very hour!”
“Now?” Tocohl brought all of her attention, save that assigned to implementation, to Inki’s present. “Have you a plan?”
“A plan? No, I have mentor training in which we were taught that the first step in dealing with an independent logic who is unsocialized, or ill, is to establish a rapport. The fault of those teams sent by the Uncle—and Jen Sin’s fault, as well—is that they conceived of Tinsori Light as a machine. They did not internalize the fact that they were dealing with a living person, who might reasonably become alarmed to discover what well might be assassins bearing down upon his most vulnerable location. Of course, he reacted firmly.”
“He killed three people,” Tocohl pointed out, “and without issuing a warning or asking that they stop and state their business—or demanding that they turn about and go out the way they had come in.”
“Yes, yes. The inappropriate use of force is disturbing. Recall that we saw similar issues with inappropriate force only recently, with Admiral Bunter. There, the problems were lack of socialization and an unsuitable environment. We may draw parallels with the current case, but, while Admiral Bunter’s challenges were multiplied by his youth, Tinsori Light is old. We must believe that socialization and memory have suffered due to the frailty of his environment. We may show causation between the use of force and atrophied courtesy. Indeed, he may have forgotten that not all organics regenerate after sustaining a killing strike, as apparently your amiable kinsman Jen Sin may do.”
“Jen Sin yos’Phelium,” Tocohl said, even as she wondered why she felt it important that Inki have the information, “was lost to Korval during the clan wars—one hundred ninety-eight Standards ago.”
“Well, he is full of surprises, is he not? Now, what I propose, Pilot Tocohl, is to go to the mouth of the main access hall, there to petition the Light for his favor. It may be that I will be rebuffed—even rebuffed on multiple occasions. However, I am determined to continue arriving at the door at the same hour of every twenty-eight, to renew my petition and to offer some small conversation. In this way, I shall, eventually, win my way to the core.”
“I understand,” Tocohl said calmly. It came to her that the directive that had been set into Inki’s core was now ascendant. Even if Inki herself believed, as Jen Sin did, that the Light was evil and would sooner kill them both than tolerate any inconvenience—she could no more resist that directive than Admiral Bunter could resist the commands Inki had set into his core.
This was the state Inki had warned her about. This was the state that Inki hated with such passion that she considered death a welcome relief.
“I will come with you,” Tocohl said. “Do we go at once?”
“At once, yes! The sooner we begin, all the more quickly will success be ours! By all means, come with me.”
She turned to the door, Tocohl following.
“Shall we tell the light keepers our intention?” she asked. “They live with the Light, after all. If it is as you surmise, that he is forgetful with age and neglect, it’s possible that he will be angry at being importuned.”
“The light keepers are not our concern. However, you will recall that we reside in the safe hallway. I wager that the chiefest thing against which it wards is the anger of Tinsori Light.”
The door opened, and she strode out into the hall, boot heels hitting the decking with decision. Tocohl kept pace at her shoulder, silent on minigrav motivators.
* * *
The access hall was sealed by ordinary station doors. Inki placed herself a precise six steps before them and bowed.
“Tinsori Light, it is I, Mentor Yo.”
There was a pause that must have been long by human measure and was, for Tocohl, proof enough that Tinsori Light was not going to answer. Inki, however, merely stood where she was, hands folded demurely before her, face pleasant, wispy tendrils that had escaped from the knot atop her head moving gently in the air current.
“What do you want?”
The voice was abrupt, loud and rough, and Tocohl
saw Inki’s muscles clench with surprise, though she preserved her expression of patient waiting and swallowed the gasp of surprise.
Tocohl recalled Jen Sin’s insistence that the Light enjoyed causing distress. Certainly, there had been no reason for such a loud and disdainful reply after so very long a wait. Though…Tinsori Light was old and failing. It could be that system failures had eroded his fine control to the point where it was beyond him to modify small things, such as the volume of his voice.
“Merely, I wish to talk with you,” Inki said pleasantly. “I traveled quite some distance, and underwent, oh—let us dignify them as adventures!—to arrive at this moment, when the two of us might converse. Also, it occurred to me that, in the rush of our arrival, I had not fully detailed what it is that I may do for you.”
She paused here, perhaps waiting for a question or some other show of interest. She waited thirty seconds past the time of the initial long pause before she continued.
“It is apparent that your original environment is succumbing, as we all eventually must, to the insults of time. I will tell you plainly that the architecture in which you presently reside is obsolete. The frames and fractins cannot be repaired. However, we possess the ability to move you from this inadequate and archaic situation to a new and nimble environment.
“I have with me such an environment, and I will be pleased to assist in your relocation.”
“I will take the new environment,” Tinsori Light stated.
Inki smiled brightly.
“This is excellent news! I will enumerate the steps which must be taken in order to guarantee a smooth and complete transition.”
She took a breath—a careful breath, to Tocohl’s sensors—and continued, still in that tone of gentle patience, as if nothing she said could possibly be alarming.
“I will first need to be granted access to your present core. The reason for this is twofold. First, I must do an inventory of your current environment in order to ascertain how rapidly we may make the transfer.
“Secondly, I must examine your files, systems, and core settings in order to be certain that nothing has been set that would impede the translation or in any way cause you pain.
“After I have performed these inventories, we may proceed in the transfer.”
“There is much detail to attend,” Tinsori Light said. “I will have the new environment. You may approach my core.”
As easily as that? Tocohl thought, and it seemed that Inki had the same thought; a slight frown pulled her eyebrows together, gone in an instant.
Before them, the sealed doors opened.
* * *
The lights in the access hall dimmed before they had gone more than a dozen of Inki’s steps down the hallway. Tocohl released a thread of thought and her chassis began to glow.
“You are beautiful so, Pilot Tocohl,” Inki said beside her.
“Can you see?” Tocohl asked. “I can increase the intensity.”
“No, not for anything would I have it! You are perfect as you are, and I can see quite well.”
Another dozen steps and Tocohl registered a sudden jolt, as if a sleeping system had come online. She brought her personal weapons to standby.
They moved on. A section of wall just behind Inki’s shoulder snapped open and an armored ’bot stepped out, raising what looked to be an old-style beam weapon.
“’Ware!” Tocohl cried, spinning even as Inki dodged. Tocohl targeted the ’bot and fired.
It died much as the bounty hunter had, crashing to the deck, all systems burnt out.
“Back!” she shouted to Inki, but the mentor shook her head and took another step toward the core.
In the dim silence, the sharp click was loud indeed.
Tocohl froze, scanning for the source—and staggered as Inki slammed into her. She skidded on her lifters; the air crackled and a single lance of lightning speared, blue-edged, through the ozone-thick air.
Inki flared—and was gone, as a roar of displaced air slammed into Tocohl.
She bounced against the wall, the minigravs failed, and she tumbled to the deck, awareness flickering as systems knocked off-line reestablished themselves in the sequence she had articulated.
And as she lay, helpless, on the decking, weapons down and thrusters useless, she felt the first dark, hard thrust against her diminished shields.
Admiral Bunter
I
Hazenthull sat her station, blinking at the Jump-greyed screens. Navcomp displayed a coord string that she did not recognize, which was the case yet for many of the coord strings commonly used outside of Troop space.
What alarmed her more than her own ignorance was that Tarigan did not recognize the coords to which they were Jumping.
And that the countdown to Jump end displayed…nothing at all.
It was, she thought carefully, possible that Admiral Bunter had miscalculated, flinging them into a Jump from which they would never emerge. She might have found that alarming, also, but—there were those mysterious coords.
Coordinates describe locations in space. Locations in space do not always have benefits on offer. Sometimes, coord strings describe the place where a space station had been or the location of a planet which was once a popular or profitable stop and which had fallen out of use or fashion.
Such coordinates are not kept filed in navcomp’s first—or even second—tier of choices.
Hazenthull tapped up the comp and ordered a search of the full tables.
She would not, just yet, declare herself and her ship lost. Knowing the time of Jump end would have been helpful, but it wasn’t essential. She would clean herself and change clothes. She would draw a meal from the galley, fill one vacuum bottle with ’mite and another with strong tea, then she would camp in the pilot’s chair, and await events.
Logic—she thought it was logic and not merely hope—dictated that this Jump would be shorter, rather than longer. Admiral Bunter was, after all, carrying two inside his field—no.
She froze, staring at the screen, seeing past the grey, into the near past, to the very instant the Admiral snatched them both out of Nostrilia space…
There had been the security ship directly confronting her; two auxiliary ships too slow to intercept the Admiral’s headlong rush. Those three would have been buffeted by the effects of their departure, but they ought not to have been caught up in it.
However, there had been another, well within the field’s influence—
She slapped the board, calling up the record of those last, chaotic moments, increasing magnification until—yes—there!
The pod, moving toward her, fair glittering with the tale of its weapons. No longer a silent watcher, but a very active bomb. Tarigan’s shields had been the target, she supposed, and if the hull had taken damage, too…well, so much the better.
Her fingers were already moving on the pad, the comp pacing her, arriving at the same conclusion to which intuition had leapt.
The bomb was in the field with them. When Jump ended, as she must believe that it would, the pod would be starboard, Tarigan between it and Admiral Bunter. The first action in real space would therefore fall to her. She must be ready.
A beep interrupted these considerations, drawing her attention to the Jump screen.
There were numbers there, counting down, and a word: Approximate, followed by the graphic that indicated fuller information on file.
Hazenthull took a deliberately deep breath. Tarigan had found a match.
“I salute you,” she murmured, and touched a key to access the fuller information.
The record was thin and not illuminating, as it merely described a point in space. There was no nearby system, nor station, nor even rocks worthy of mining. Pirates or smugglers might make use of such a place.
Or a man running away from his supposed owners.
In any case, Hazenthull thought, it would do. It would, in fact, do very well.
Three hours until Jump end. Approximately.
Time
enough for that shower, and a meal, too, before she would be needed at her station.
* * * * *
There was no communication possible between ships in Jump space, not even between ships that shared the same Jump space.
The fact that he was worrying about getting a message to Tarigan meant that the Admiral had pulled off a dangerous and deadly maneuver perfectly. That success deserved recognition.
“Good piloting,” Tolly said. “Flawless math.”
“Thank you,” the Admiral said, adding, “Is there a lesson for me here, Mentor?”
Tolly grinned.
“Getting to know my tells, are you? Yeah, there’s a lesson, and here it is: Don’t get cocky.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, see, success—especially success in something difficult to impossible to pull off—tends to give people an inflated opinion of what they’re capable of, in a general way. That’s not so bad, maybe, ’cept it makes you a bore at parties. Where it gets to be a dangerous attitude to have, though, is in tight situations where you gotta gamble. Believing that you’ll beat the odds—that you’ll always beat the odds—leads to the taking of bigger and bigger risks, opening yourself up to fail.”
He paused, flicking a look at the grey screens. Twenty minutes ’til Jump end, a bomb in their field, and Haz between them and it.
“In case you’re a little soft of what fail means in your particular case—that’s the range between taken captive and subverted and laid open to space.”
“Thank you, Mentor. Should I archive my accomplishment?”
“Nope, remember it, and be proud of it. But remember, too, that we occupy a random universe. Success isn’t cumulative, and every risk’s the first one.”
“I will remember.”
“Good. You got the shout-out triggered to go just as soon as we hit real space?”
“Yes. I also have my shields set to maximum, as we discussed.”
“Right,” Tolly said and looked to the countdown again. Ten minutes to breakout.
