The philosophy lecturer on ethics had sometimes been the bane of the trainees, deliberately contradicting every moral precept they held to force them to think about what they believed—and then formulate solid foundations for their actions and principles. They were all more assured, stronger people and less likely to slide into unforeseen temptation because of him, but the growth period had been painful for them all.
“Now that peace is here,” Trinia said, “the economy is recovering and every Spacer who wants a new ship is getting one. Even with the Leapers filling in the gaps in the shipping demand, there's more than enough work for Spacers. The Commonwealth is building lots of ships."
“What does that have to do with Lin starting a school to train Spacers?” Don demanded.
“We'll need new Spacers faster than we can breed them,” Arin supplied.
“That's another problem,” Lissy said. “With so many Scouts coming from the Spacers, who has the time to start families and raise children?"
Everyone turned to Bain. He squeezed his drink bulb, sending up a jet of juice that fractured into droplets before it reached his face. He snatched up a napkin and blotted the floating globules and prayed his face wasn't as red hot as it felt. Families and children? His thoughts always drifted to Rhiann every time he thought about getting married someday. He hadn't seen her since he started training on Drasti nearly eight Standard months ago. Letters and audio chips weren't good enough, anymore.
“We'll take care of that problem when it shows up, all right?” he finally said, when he couldn't take the expectant grins any longer.
“I just can't see Lin as a teacher,” Don said. His grin grew wider. “She barely survived having one apprentice."
“You wouldn't have survived her at all,” Trinia retorted. She gave her drink bulb one deft squeeze, sending a thin jet of bright red juice straight into Don's face.
The three-note chime of a ship hailing them filtered across the bridge from the communications panel to the galley niche. For a moment, everyone was silent, staring, then they burst out laughing. Trinia shook her head, giggling, and launched off the edge of the galley table with a strong kick from one foot. She had communications duty this shift. She turned a somersault as she darted across the bridge to the communications panel.
“This is the Scout ship Star Arrow,” she said as soon as her fingers brushed across the tracer pad. “Please identify yourself.” Her fingers tapped out the command for the computer to identify the transponder code required of all ships in Commonwealth space.
“Hello, Star Arrow,” a familiar female voice said. “This is the Leap-ship Estal'es'cai. Could we speak with your commander, please?"
“Rhiann,” Gorgi whispered. “What's she doing running communications?"
“Identity of the Estal'es'cai confirmed,” Trinia reported. “Visual, engine emissions and transponder code."
Bain shook his head. He didn't quite trust his voice to sound normal—or dignified—with dozens of questions trying to jump off his tongue.
“How'd they find us here?” Don wanted to know. He finished wiping juice off his face and tucked the damp handkerchief back into his pocket.
There was only one way to find out. Bain slid out of his seat in the galley booth and pushed off the edge to float over to the communications panel.
“I'm here, Rhiann. What's going on?"
“Major Gilmore told us you'd be coming out this way for your first Knaught Point test. I assume everything worked?” Her words were teasing, Bain realized, but the expected mischievous laughter was missing completely from her voice.
“Perfectly. Is everything all right with you? How is Herin?"
Under any other circumstances, Bain would have turned around to give Gorgi a teasing glare. The on-again, off-again romance between Gorgi and Herin had grown routine enough to be slightly amusing for all sides involved. However, Bain's sense for trouble held him back this time.
“I'm fine, Commander,” Herin said, joining the conversation. Rhiann's older sister sounded tired. Bain suspected she had just taken the Estal'es'cai through a dimensional Leap only a short time ago.
“This is serious, isn't it?"
“Bain, Lin needs you. Immediately.” The Leaper captain paused. Bain could hear her take a deep breath. “We have permission from Major Gilmore to tow the Star Arrow in a Leap, to get to Lin as soon as possible."
“Is your crew prepared for that?” Rhiann added.
“We know the theory.” Bain fought an icy sensation that threatened to spread out from his stomach and turn his whole body stiff. “Time to put it into practice.” He turned around at the console and faced his friends. “Ready?"
Half an hour later, direct-line communications and computer links were established. Bain again sat in the piloting dome, this time with Arin as his second to monitor the condition and reactions of the Star Arrow as it went through the dimensional Leap. There had been no time for frivolous things like questions. Bain hadn't even been able to talk to either Rhiann or Herin. He had left all the protocols to his crew as he prepared the ship's computer and checked the sensor fields and shields for the transition.
Gorgi had to be put into a drugged sleep in the sickbay. Lin and Bain had proven Spacers didn't need the usual buffer drug given to non-Leapers to protect them during the transition. Gorgi wasn't a Spacer, and there was no time to establish the life-support tunnel between the two ships to bring the drug over for his use. Don Piller, their assigned medic for this trip, put Gorgi under a monitor and administered the tranquilizers himself and then stayed in sickbay to keep watch over their crewmate. That left Dan, Lissy and Trinia on the bridge to monitor everything else during transition.
“All clear on this side,” Herin reported.
“Clear here,” Bain said without hesitation. He glanced at Arin, tightly strapped into the couch behind and to his right. His crewman nodded. “Mind if I ask where we're going?"
Herin laughed. It was a tight, fractured sound and told Bain more clearly than anything else that this was a bad situation. Just what did Lin need him for? He had been afraid to ask, and now it seemed Herin and Rhiann were afraid to tell him.
“Sorry. That seemed to have slipped my mind,” the Leaper captain said. “We're going to Fengrath."
“Lin has friends on Fengrath."
“Had."
“Oh.” Bain swallowed hard. Now was not the time to ask what had happened to them. “She's investigating what happened? She sent for—” He stopped, knowing how foolish and slightly arrogant that sounded even before he finished the statement. He and his friends were only trainees, even with their own ship. The Scout Corps was still being born, so why should Lin send for them to help her find out what happened to her friends?
Still, Bain knew he should have been there for her from the beginning.
“We're all set,” he said. The questions could wait for when they reached orbit around Fengrath.
“Set. Tractor field enfolding now."
Bain winced, then fought to keep his eyes open as a bright haze formed around his ship. He should have kept the piloting dome shields up, he realized now. In a few seconds, the haze dimmed and his eyes adjusted and he could read the controls.
Bain missed the actual moment of transition. He had his eyes on his instrument board, watching for the first sign that the Star Arrow couldn't take the strain of the Leap. The shield and sensor fields barely flickered. A few internal monitors showed a little stress, barely more than would register during normal flight at cruising speed. There was a pause of only fifteen seconds—the minimum time necessary for the ships to establish equilibrium before going through the Leap again. Then the monitors flickered again, just a little. They were back in their home universe, but in a totally new star system. When Bain looked up, the tractor field glow around the ship was just starting to fade.
“Barely felt anything,” he said with justifiable pride. Bain turned, grinning, to ask Arin what he thought of his first Leap.
Ari
n curled up in a fetal ball, both hands clamped over his mouth. Despite the shadows of the piloting dome, he was a definite pale green. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and soaked into his coverall at armpits and down his back and across his chest.
“I have a sick crewman,” Bain said. “What do I do for him?"
There was a moment's pause. Just before Bain began to wonder if his ship had been separated from the Estal'es'cai during the Leap, Rhiann answered.
“His equilibrium is probably off kilter,” she said. “Anything you have for motion sickness should work. Get something in his stomach."
“Thanks. I'll check in with you in a few minutes, but right now it looks like we came through without a problem."
“Wonderful,” Herin said. “We'll hold course here and wait for you to call."
Bain sighed as he unfastened his strap. He had hoped to get some answers on what Lin was doing on Fengrath, but answers would have to wait until he had taken care of Arin. No matter how badly Lin needed his help, she wouldn't appreciate him neglecting his responsibilities.
“Nice and easy,” Bain muttered, as he got Arin out of his acceleration couch and towed him down through the hatch into the bridge.
The bridge was empty.
“Hey, where is everybody?"
“Sickbay,” Lissy responded over the intercom. “Trinia and the twins both nearly lost their lunches when we came through."
“Just great. How are you feeling?"
“Fine. I'd ask how soon we could do it again, if I didn't think I'd get my head bitten off."
Bain grinned despite himself. Leave it to Lissy to inject a little humor into a depressing situation. At least he had one crew who wasn't sick from transition.
He and Lin hadn't become sick at all the first time Sunsinger was towed by the Estal'es'cai. They had naturally assumed that the genetic twitch that made Spacers what they were protected them from the general illness of transition. It seemed now that wasn't necessarily so. It had to be a genetic difference, but maybe it wasn't exclusively limited to Spacers, since not all Spacers were immune.
When Bain floated Arin into sickbay, he found Gorgi just starting to recover from his dose of tranquilizers and Lissy working on making Trinia, Dan and Don comfortable. Gorgi lay on his side, blinking as he tried to refocus his eyes, silent and limp as a rag doll. The other three were curled up on their sides on the other side of the long sickbay bed area, pale and wide-eyed, with dark sweat marks drying on their clothes. Bain deposited Arin on a medical bed next to his cousin.
“Rhiann said general motion sickness medicine should do it, and get them to eat something,” he told Lissy.
“Eat?” Trinia moaned. She covered her mouth and curled up a little tighter.
* * * *
Twenty minutes later, a two-man ship left the Estal'es'cai and hopped the short distance between the two ships. The Leaper craft was the first to land in the massive transport bay of the Star Arrow. Bain left Lissy and Gorgi to handle the mechanics while he went down to the bay to meet Rhiann and Herin. The rest of his crew had retired to their cabins to sleep off their bout with transition sickness.
For the first time, Bain wondered at the idiocy of letting a handful of trainees take out such a massive ship. Maybe the Star Arrow wasn't large compared to some ships in the Fleet and among the Rangers, but it was a floating city compared to Sunsinger and other Spacer ships. Either the Rangers training them had been deceived into thinking Bain and his friends were ready, or there were an even dozen Ranger ships flying just outside Star Arrow's sensor range, waiting to come to the rescue.
Correction—maybe they had been waiting. When the Estal'es'cai put Star Arrow into its tractor field and Leaped to Fengrath, they had put two months of Knaught Point travel between them and the theoretical watching Rangers.
Either the Rangers were fools, or the trainees were ready and worthy of the trust implied in the gift of such a huge vessel.
Bain tried not to dwell on those questions as he waited for the air to cycle back into the transport bay. The alternative, though, was to wonder what Lin was doing on Fengrath and what kind of trouble she was in. Knowing Lin like he did, it had to be serious to make her send for help from so far away. Lin was a very common sense-type person; when she needed help, she asked for it and wasn't embarrassed to admit her own shortcomings. But she also refused to ‘inconvenience’ others. Interrupting the Scouts’ training fit Lin's definition of ‘inconvenience'.
The light over the airlock door turned green. Bain pressed his palm against the sensor plate. A blue light bar passed across it, reading his print, then the airlock door slid open.
Herin and Rhiann floated through. Herin wore her full formal black captain's uniform. Rhiann wore the silvery-gray uniform of a captain's daughter who hadn't taken her own ship yet. There were no bars on the shoulders of her uniform to indicate her training level.
Why? Bain wondered. Rhiann should have gone on to apprentice on someone else's ship years ago, if her own sister or mother couldn't train her. Why was Rhiann still a junior on her sister's ship, instead of captaining her own?
“Permission to come aboard, Commander?” Herin asked, cutting off his flow of questions before they became a river.
“Granted. Welcome.” Bain shifted back from the airlock, holding onto the guide bar bolted to the wall. “The waiting room is ... this way.” He glanced up and down the connecting passageway to find the open hatch, and led them into the first anteroom.
Benches lined the wall, matte-finish silver with dark blue cushions. A cluster of chairs bolted to the deck sat in the middle of the floor.
“Ah ... I'd ask you to sit down, but...” He shrugged and stayed floating in the doorway.
“How is your crew?” Rhiann asked.
“Comfortable, at least. I think some of them are a little embarrassed at getting sick. I mean, they're Spacers."
“Some Leapers get transition sickness at puberty,” Herin offered. “It's nothing to be ashamed of, merely a physical difference."
“Whatever.” He gripped the frame of the door. “What about Lin?"
“Do you know what it's like down on Fengrath?"
“It's a free port—meaning there's a general law protecting the citizens against attacks and thievery and murder. They take care of their own, and the Commonwealth and the Conclave don't have much say in what goes on. It's a border colony."
“Do you know why Lin came here?” Rhiann asked.
“There's a story that a missing Spacer ship crashed here and the children survived. They grew up and blended into the culture and their descendants never left. Lin's looking for Spacer blood.” Bain gripped the doorframe harder, fighting an urge to shriek at them to tell him what had happened.
“Lin's friends—what side of the law do they follow?” Rhiann shook her head when Bain's mouth dropped open. “Would they do anything that might get her in trouble?"
“No. They're just merchants. Craftsmen. They don't make anything that anyone would want on the black market.” His voice cracked, but he managed to get out the words. “What's happened to Lin?"
“She's missing,” Herin said simply. She hooked her foot through the arm of a chair, pulled herself down into the seat, and managed to sit by twining her leg around the leg of the chair to keep herself anchored.
“What kind of missing?"
“Missing. No body. No ransom notes. No signs of anyone trying to take Sunsinger off the planet."
“No one could take Sunsinger. Ganfer wouldn't let them.” Bain froze, realizing he had just said something important.
Neither sister reacted. By their very stillness, he knew Ganfer was the key.
“Ganfer wouldn't let anything happen to Lin,” he whispered. Bain's hand was starting to go numb from gripping the doorframe so hard. “What happened to him?"
* * *
Chapter Five
“Spaceport authorities received the beginning of a distress call from Sunsinger. By the time they dispatched a security tea
m, whoever attacked Lin and Ganfer had left,” Herin began.
“Attacked?"
“The bridge's outside hatch was open, the ladder extended and still twitching from someone climbing down,” Rhiann said. She reached over and gripped Bain's arm. It amazed him a little how much comfort could come through the simplicity of touching. “Whoever it was set off a bomb on the bridge. There's no way of telling how much of Ganfer is damaged, how much is ... gone. They're not even sure Sunsinger will ever be spaceworthy again."
“Rhi,” her sister softly scolded.
“A bomb,” Bain echoed.
“There was no blood in the wreckage, so Lin wasn't hurt in the explosion. Whoever took her bombed Ganfer to keep him from sending for help. Probably Ganfer wouldn't let them leave the ship, so they had to destroy his control over the hatch before they could get out,” Herin added, frowning thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her yet.
“When will they know if he's gone?"
“We won't know until someone starts repairing him. The port authorities have kept Sunsinger sealed off until they could agree on who had authority to investigate. Fengrath is a border world, after all,” Rhiann added, shrugging. “It doesn't belong to either the Commonwealth or the Conclave."
“And neither side really wants it, either,” Bain said. He shook his head, not quite believing what he had just heard. “How long ago?"
“Nearly a week, when we came into orbit and our sensors showed Sunsinger was in the spaceport,” Herin said. “We tried to hail Lin, but got no answer. The spaceport authorities didn't want to answer any of our questions until they found out we were Leapers, and friends of Lin's."
“When we found out, we came to get you,” Rhiann added. “Major Gilmore said to take all the time you want and ask for all the resources you want. He says he and a lot of others in high places owe Lin."
“Whoever hurt her is going to owe her, too,” Bain muttered. “Okay, how soon can we get planetside?"
“We're an hour out of orbit.” Herin pushed out of her chair and floated up to the door. “We can leave as soon as you're ready. One more thing, though."
Scouts [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 10] Page 4
