Starpilot's Grave: Book Two of Mageworlds

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  The copilot went on forward, and Llannat settled back against the cushions to wait for lift-off. After a minute or two the deck tilted as the forward nullgravs lifted the ship’s nose skyward, and a few seconds later the heavy force of launch pressed her back into the cushions.

  Naversey’s pilot certainly wasn’t doing this one the slow and careful way, Llannat reflected. The acceleration was heavier than any she’d experienced since Ari’s sister Beka had lifted from Nammerin with the Space Force hot on the trail behind her, and it didn’t let up until the discontinuity that marked a jump to hyper.

  Llannat unstrapped and sat up.

  On the couch next to hers, the stocky reservist with the staff tabs on his shoulders sat up as well. “What the hell,” he said, “is going on? I demand that someone tell me.”

  His older counterpart smiled faintly. “Since we’re traveling under sealed orders,” he said, “I presume you’ll have to wait for enlightenment with the rest of us.”

  At that moment, a flatscreen on the forward bulkhead flickered to life, with the words STAFF BRIEFING in white on a shadowed blue background. They faded to the words TOP SECRET, which faded in turn to a picture of a senior officer sitting at a desk.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Two days ago, the Mageworlds Fleet made an unusual discovery: a derelict Magebuilt spacecraft. You have been assigned to board and examine her … .”

  The officer’s picture dissolved to a long-range view of a Deathwing raider. The superimposed aimpoints showed that this particular visual had come from a fighter’s gun cameras. “When you go aboard the vessel,” the voice continued, “you will already be in possession of every piece of information we have on Magebuilt ships. Your mission will be to find out what we don’t know … .”

  “The hell with that,” said the younger staff officer. “For this they pulled me away from the office? I have important work to do.”

  V.

  MAGEWORLDS ZONE: ERAASI NEARSPACE; ERAASI PORT

  Far ABOVE the planet Eraasi—once the heart-world of the Magelords’ interstellar hegemony, now stripped of its preeminent status—Warhammer popped out of hyper and into realspace.

  Nyls Jessan, in the pilot’s seat, glanced across at his current partner. The dark, wiry man whom Beka had called Ignac’ LeSoit was a pro, all right; he didn’t blush or flinch under Jessan’s frankly suspicious gaze. The corners of LeSoit’s mouth, however, were tight, and his eyes were clouded.

  Jessan suppressed a sigh. “All right,” he said aloud. “I don’t like this a hell of a lot more than you do. But it was the captain’s idea, and we handle it the way the captain says.”

  “She doesn’t have any common sense, you know,” LeSoit said. He might have been discussing the weather. “She never did.”

  “So everyone tells me,” said Jessan. “In my opinion, common sense is a vastly overrated commodity.”

  LeSoit made a noise of disbelief. “Sounds like something she would say. Where the hell did she pick you up, anyhow?”

  Jessan thought about taking offense—it was not, he considered, Ignaceu LeSoit’s place to be asking questions like that—but he decided not to bother. The process of turning a living Tarnekep Portree into a realistic bloodstained corpse in a stasis box had been an unpleasant experience all around.

  “She needed a copilot,” he said. “And the Space Force didn’t want me anymore … there were a few insignificant legal problems, nothing to concern a gentleman in your profession … so here I am.”

  “So there you are,” LeSoit agreed. He watched the starfield for a moment, and then said, “Your captain isn’t a person it pays to take lightly. Someone could get hurt.”

  “Dear me. Is that a caution against trifling with the gentlelady’s affections?”

  “You could take it that way.”

  “How interesting,” said Jessan. “Allow me, then, to reassure you. The small matter of lethal weaponry aside, I am not, in fact, dangerous to know.”

  “That’s good,” LeSoit said. He smiled under his thin mustache. “Because if you’d come up with the wrong answer there, I was going to kill you.”

  There was silence for a moment in the ’Hammer’s cockpit. Then Jessan gave a short laugh. “If Captain Rosselin-Metadi could hear this conversation, she’d probably want to strangle us both … so I won’t bother saying that if you make one false move down there on Eraasi, I’ll shoot you myself and save the captain some trouble.”

  “Right,” said LeSoit. The hired gun remained tense; but this time his smile was almost genuine. “It’s always a good idea to get things like that straightened out in advance. I really don’t like surprises.”

  Beka Rosselin-Metadi was Tarnekep Portree was a bloodstained corpse in a clear glass box with DOMINA OF ENTIBOR written on the lid. She was awake she was asleep she was alive was not alive was dreaming …

  Ebenra D’Caer.

  … the night before you die, you’ll dream about this and remember.

  Ebenra D’Caer.

  … dream, and remember.

  Ebenra D’Caer.

  She dreamed, and remembered:

  Ovredis, and the elegant rooms and marble staircases of a banker’s country estate. Again she wore a dress of sea-foam green, and the knife this time was strapped to her thigh, out of sight under the frothy skirt. Mistress Hyfid, small and dark, kept watch at one elbow, and the Professor maintained a grave and avuncular presence at the other. The three of them didn’t look like hunters, but they were.

  And Ebenra D’Caer was prey … .

  She was no longer Beka Rosselin-Metadi, or even the one-eyed starpilot Tarnekep Portree. She was the Princess Berran of Sapne, young and sheltered and impressionable. She didn’t know any better than to go alone to a private chamber with Gentlesir Ebenra D‘Caer of the Rolny D’Caers.

  The delicate antique door swung shut behind them on its filigreed hinges, and Ebenra D’Caer lost no time. His voice continued spinning out the line of practiced compliments that had drawn the Princess of Sapne away from the crowded reception rooms, while the fingers of one hand began teasing her bodice down over the curve of her breast.

  Beka looked past his bent, distracted head and met Jessan’s eyes. The Khesatan stepped forward out of concealment and struck down D’Caer with a single well-directed blow.

  And we had him then, oh yes, we had him … .

  Ebenra D’Caer.

  … dream, and remember.

  She remembered:

  The docking bay of the asteroid base, and a phantom Ovredis of light and illusion, built up from the Professor’s holodisplays and Mistress Hyfid’s heglamourment of Ebenra D’Caer’s drugged and receptive mind. She was once again the Princess of Sapne in a sea-green gown, with the weight of a tiara in her braided hair, but the Professor had made her leave the long double-edged knife behind.

  Ebenra D’Caer took her by the arm and stepped close. She saw the tiny blaster in his other hand.

  “Summon your vehicle,” he said; and, in a low voice, “No tricks, Your Highness, or I will hurt you. Badly.”

  The Professor’s illusions shifted, and a hovercar seemed to purr toward them. If she looked closely, she could see that the vehicle was only a mock-up, a shell about which the Professor and Mistress Hyfid could weave their expert illusions—but D’Caer’s eyes were wide and dark from the drugs Jessan had given him, and fogged by the Adept’s influence upon his mind.

  We had him then; he was ours to wring dry and dispose of any way we wanted to … .

  She was the Princess of Sapne, and she was afraid. She let D’Caer guide her to the hovercar and slide after her into the passenger compartment. A touch of his hand on the control panel, and the privacy screen between passengers and chauffeur darkened into place. He was smiling.

  “Shall we resume where we left off, my dear?”

  She felt his hand grasping at her breast, kneading it, and then he was pulling at the neckline of her gown, dragging the sea green fabric away from her flesh. His
mouth was on her nipple, sucking hard enough to leave bruises on the bare skin, and his other hand was reaching up below her skirt.

  But it was worth it. Because we had him, and he didn’t know it. And I could have killed him afterward, any time I wanted to … .

  Ebenra D’Caer.

  Dream, and remember … .

  She remembered:

  The deep corridors of the asteroid base, where the Professor’s robotic servants had turned into jailers for the captive D’Caer. She was no longer the Princess of Sapne, nor was she Tarnekep Portree; she was Beka Rosselin-Metadi, fresh out of a healing pod in a hospital on Gyffer, with the newly regenerated flesh of her right side making her wince whenever she moved too fast.

  She had Nyls Jessan with her when she went down to the maximum-security cell. Her legs were still wobbly; when nobody else was watching she let the tall Khesatan take her arm and support part of her weight. She’d paid in blood for the success of the raid on Darvell—and not a little of that blood had been her own.

  We did it, though. We blew the top off the Citadel and pulled out Nivome the Rolny and carried him away in the ’Hammer like so much cargo. A quick stop back at the base to pick up Ebenra D’Caer, and then we could take our matched pair of assassins home to Dadda … .

  She checked the status readouts on the flat-display by the cell door. “All secure, no change, subject docile.”

  “Better bring up the force field just the same,” Jessan said. “You never can tell.”

  She didn’t have the energy to argue. A quick touch on the security panel, and the force field shimmered into place. Beside her, Jessan drew his blaster and held it ready. She touched the panel again and the door slid open.

  The cell was empty.

  It was Magework; she knew it without needing to look further. Ebenra D’Caer had been working for the Magelords all along, and his masters had come to fetch him out of his asteroid prison while the Professor wasn’t there to guard it.

  I should have shot him when I had the chance. Now it’s all to do over. I have a debt to collect from Gentlesir Ebenra D’Caer.

  Dream, and remember:

  Ebenra D’Caer.

  Warhammer came down from Eraasi orbit to the spaceport in the late afternoon, local time. A yellow sun shone on the folded hills beyond the port, long rays slanting across through broken clouds with no hint of rain in them. The air was clear and cool, and full of a golden light.

  With a rumble of displaced air, the Libra-class freighter broke through the high wisps of cloud, airfoil body providing lift to assist the engines as the freighter decelerated and turned to the strip heading from orbit. Finally the ’Hammer settled on her nullgravs into the landing block on the hardstand assigned by Eraasi Inspace Control.

  Through the cockpit viewscreen, Jessan saw the distant figures of two men standing at the edge of the port field beside a wheeled cargo skipsled.

  “Ours?” he asked LeSoit.

  “Can’t imagine who else they’d be for. Port’s dead empty.”

  Jessan unstrapped his safety webbing and stood up. “I’ll go lower the ramp and get ready to open the main cargo hatch. You’d better come along to do the talking.”

  “And to stay where you can keep an eye on me?”

  Jessan raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t planning on letting me out of your sight, were you?”

  “Now that you mention it, no.”

  By the time they got the ’Hammer’s ramp all the way down, the skipsled and its passengers had almost reached the ship. “Go,” murmured Jessan, and LeSoit stepped out onto the ramp.

  Jessan himself stood out of sight inside the open airlock, one hand resting on his blaster. By now he was convinced—almost—that LeSoit was as much an ally as the gunman claimed, and as Beka believed. But almost was only that, and from here he could hit the Raise Ramp button and still have time to shoot LeSoit before the airlock closed. He didn’t particularly think he’d have to, but it never hurt to be ready.

  The sled drew near and braked. “Yo, Ignac’!” one of the riders called out in badly accented Galcenian. “You have it?”

  Jessan saw LeSoit’s shoulders tense slightly. “Yes.”

  “Right—we’re here to collect.”

  “I’ll open the cargo bay.” LeSoit stepped back into the airlock, glancing at Jessan as he did so.

  Jessan nodded. “You get down to Main Cargo,” he said quietly, “and I’ll push the buttons from up here.”

  A few minutes later, there was a loud clunk followed by a metallic groaning noise. Part of the ’Hammer’s ventral section broke away from the shell of the vessel and lowered itself on hydraulics to the landing block.

  Jessan watched in the bulkhead monitor as LeSoit rode the platform down. When the elevator reached the ground, the gunman waved the cargoskip toward him, guiding it by hand gestures up onto the platform. As soon as the skipsled stopped, Jessan pressed another button.

  With a loud whine of electromechanical motors, a large box—a little longer than the height of a man—came down from the cargo bay in a bridle of wire rope. The box was finished in dull black plastic, and stood nearly waist-high when it settled onto the sled. LeSoit unfastened the shackles that held the ropes in place; Jessan pressed the button again; and the wires rose back up into the belly of the ship.

  LeSoit joined the two Eraasians on the skipsled, and the vehicle pulled back off the elevator. In the concealment of the airlock, Jessan drew a deep breath. He’d taken all the precautions he could, but this next bit—leaving his sheltered niche and joining LeSoit and the others out in the open—was still a good place for a double-cross.

  It can’t be helped, he thought resignedly, and hit the buttons to raise the cargo elevator and to close up the ship after he left. The elevator began sighing its way back into place, and Jessan started down the ramp to the waiting skipsled. He climbed onto the sled with the others as the ’Hammer’s ramp swung up to seal the ship behind him.

  Once aboard the sled, he relaxed somewhat. LeSoit had greeted him with a casual nod, as if he were an expected presence, and neither of the two Eraasians appeared startled by the appearance of a second person from aboard the ship.

  “You riding along with Ignac’?” one asked.

  Jessan nodded. “My contract said payment on delivery. So I’m delivering.”

  The Eraasian laughed. “Right. Hang on—here we go.”

  The skipsled trundled noisily toward the gate. “Not much port traffic lately, from the looks of it,” LeSoit commented to the driver.

  “You called that right,” the driver replied. “Been duller than watching paint dry around here.”

  They drove through the gate—the guard waved the skipsled past without stopping it—and pulled over to a loading dock where two more men waited with a wheeled cargo truck. From the neat tailoring of the duo’s jackets and trousers, and their general unrumpled and unsmudged appearance, Jessan pegged them as the ones actually in charge of the reception party.

  After some maneuvering, the driver of the skipsled got it loaded into the back of the truck. LeSoit and the other cargo wrangler raised the rear gate into place. The cargo wrangler joined his partner in the truck’s cab, while the other two men stayed in back with Jessan, LeSoit, and the sled.

  With a grumbling roar and a cloud of chemical fumes, the truck lurched forward and bounced off down the road. Jessan braced himself against the black box—until he’d hit the Mageworlds, he reflected, he’d never really appreciated the smoothness of a nullgrav-assisted ride—and watched the pavement unreeling behind him.

  The two neatly dressed Eraasians noticed his interest. “Ever been here before?” one asked.

  Jessan suppressed the urge to panic. The question was clearly meant for a friendly inquiry. “No.”

  “You’ll like it,” the man said. “Not like some of these garnach places.”

  Jessan nodded—he didn’t know what a garnach place might be, but didn’t want to betray his unfamiliarity with the local sla
ng by asking—and went back to watching the road. No telling when he might have to make it back to the ship on his own, and if he did he’d have to do so by landmarks. So far, everybody he’d met on Eraasi spoke Galcenian, but the signs and route markers were written in a language and script he’d never seen before.

  Eraasi Spaceport, or at least the parts of it visible from the road, appeared better off than any Mageworlds city Jessan had yet seen. The architecture looked subtly alien, as if the standard dimensions for all the various structures and fittings differed fractionally but invariably from those on the other side of the Net, but the older buildings were well kept up, and there was even a noticeable amount of new construction.

  By the time the truck pulled up at another loading dock on the far side of town, Jessan’s legs ached from the vibration through the bed of the vehicle. He stretched and looked about. The truck was parked at the end of a long alley between two high buildings made of artificial stone—whatever the material actually was, its surface had the kind of studied ugliness only attained by deliberate effort. The air reeked of garbage and chemicals, and the narrow strip of sky visible above was beginning to redden with the coming of sunset.

  The two cargo wranglers got out of the front of the truck and lowered the rear gate. With much lurching and bumping they backed the skipsled and its burden off the truck bed and onto the concrete loading platform. LeSoit tugged open the double doors leading into the building and the sled grumbled through, with Jessan and the others following close behind.

  The loading dock opened onto an aboveground cargo bay full of exposed metal ductwork. Old-style incandescent glowbulbs, unshaded, gave the space an ugly yellow light. The driver guided the sled across the bay’s raw concrete floor to an open metal lift-cage.

  Working without nullgravs, it took several minutes of heaving and pushing to get the black box off the skipsled and onto the lift. They were all breathing harder by the time the Eraasian who disliked garnach places rattled down the cage door and pushed the button to take them upward. The lift rose slowly, creaking its protest against the weight, out of the basement and up through a concrete shaft, passing closed doorways onto a dozen floors—Jessan counted them—before groaning to a stop.