Chapter 2 – Luta
Cats in a Blanket
IF IT HADN’T been so annoying, it might have been an interesting psychological study to observe how the crew arranged themselves in the galley for our meeting. Yuskeya and Viss, my engineer, sat as far apart as possible. They’d had some romantic interludes over the year since Yuskeya had joined the crew of the Tane Ikai, but since the recent revelations about their Protectorate involvement, they weren’t even speaking to each other unless it was a life-or-death situation. Fortunately, those were rare.
Baden, the communications officer, and my daughter Maja, on the other hand, were still in that new-relationship honeymoon period, and sat close together, his dark head bent to her blonde one. They were so taken up with each other I wondered if they even noticed the various palls hanging over everyone else on board. Maja and I had been—not quite estranged, but close to it, for years, and our recent reconciliation and her presence on the ship made me ridiculously happy.
Rei, my best friend and the ship’s pilot of record, didn’t even sit. She’d pulled a triple caff from the machine when she first came into the galley, and now she leaned against the counter and ignored it while it cooled, arms folded across the jacket of her dark green shipsuit, face completely neutral behind her pridattii. Some people thought the face tattoos worn by Erian women concealed their expressions; after knowing Rei for five years, I thought they made her face easier to read. Now they spilled a dark beauty over a face set in unyielding anger. I’d have to talk to her, and soon. This behaviour wasn’t like her at all, and it was making everyone else nervous.
Hirin sat in one of the big armchairs, studiously trying not to look like he’d rather be sitting where I was, leading the briefing. I sighed. Wrangling this crew was beginning to feel like carrying cats in a blanket. Well, maybe a little shock treatment would nudge them out of it.
“Okej, folks. I have bad news and bad news. Which would you like first?”
No-one laughed at my weak attempt at humour, so I carried on. “We won’t make it Earthside for a while yet. In fact we’re turned around and heading back to Mars right now on autopilot.”
Maja’s face fell a little at that, and I felt a twinge of conscience. I remembered that she and Baden had booked in at a little resort on the NorthAm east coast for a few days. Well, they’d have to reschedule.
“We’ve also been drafted into the service of the Nearspace Protectorate for a little while, so you’re all going to have to take a pay cut.”
“They can’t do that,” Viss said quietly. “Drafting of commercial vessels is prohibited except in times of war or planetary emergency.”
I grinned, but no-one else was laughing. “I know, I know. That part was a joke. But it’s true that I’ve agreed to take on a job at the request of the Protectorate. Money’s not an issue, since this is a paying job. But there is one problem.”
“Of course there is,” Rei muttered.
“If you want out, you have to decide before I tell you anything about it, because it’s one of those top-secret things the Protectorate likes to do.” I mentally bit my tongue and deliberately didn’t look at Viss or Yuskeya. Shouldn’t have poked my finger into that sore spot. “Anyway, since my brother Lanar has asked me to do it, I won’t let him down. If you don’t want to participate, I can leave you on Mars for some shore leave and collect you afterwards. You’ll get your standard leave pay.”
“Is it dangerous?” Maja asked, her voice testy. She’d been on board for a few weeks now, and although she wasn’t technically part of the crew, she’d confided in me that she’d like to learn navigation. We’d been estranged as mother and daughter for so many years that I was just happy she wanted to spend time with me again, and that we were figuring out how to be friends. Not that her prickly side didn’t surface now and again, but it was less frequent.
I shrugged. “Lanar didn’t mention any risks, and I’m sure he would have if there were obvious ones. It’s only a passenger delivery run, but it involves things the Protectorate wants to keep quiet.”
“Makes no difference to me where we go,” Viss rumbled. “I’ll stay aboard. Think I’ll clean out the plasma intakes and overhaul the Krasnikov generator if we’re planning many skips.”
I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. I found it hard to imagine there was a major system on board that Viss hadn’t already stripped down and rebuilt since we’d dropped Mother off on Kiando, but if it gave him something to do and kept him from moping around the galley then I wouldn’t complain.
“Nowhere else for me to go,” Rei said expressionlessly. “Never was that keen on Mars.”
Baden and Maja shared a glance, and Baden drawled, “I guess we’re in, too. Frankly, the curiosity would keep me on board, if nothing else. We can change our leave plans.”
Maja nodded. “But what does the Protectorate need from a far trader? They’ve got lots of passenger shuttles.”
Yuskeya had her orders from Lanar to participate in the job, so the only other one I needed to hear from was Hirin. I realized too late that I really shouldn’t have said yes to Lanar without at least checking with my husband, but when I glanced at him, he gave me a slight nod. I felt a wave of relief wash over me. At least he wasn’t angry that I’d bypassed him.
“Okej then, here’s the situation.” I filled them in on what Lanar had told me about the new wormhole, the artifact moon, the Chron connection, and our mission.
Baden whistled long and low. “A Chron artifact? How do they know?”
“Lanar didn’t say. But they must be pretty certain.”
“The Protectorate has a reasonably large database on the Chron,” Yuskeya offered. “It doesn’t get used much, but I guess they’d send people who were familiar with it.”
“Can’t be too large,” Viss said, his eyes on his steaming mug. “As I recall my history lessons, we couldn’t find out enough about them to help us stop them. None of us would even be here if they hadn’t disappeared on their own.”
“It’s pretty meagre, but it’s comprehensive.” The hint of defiance in Yuskeya’s voice was clear.
Hirin spoke in the awkward silence that followed. “Wonder why they think a Lobor historian will be able to help out?”
“I wondered that, too,” I said. “I guess we’ll find out when we meet her on Anar.”
“That moon must be worth a pile of credits,” Baden mused with a grin. He’d put an arm around Maja’s shoulders. “Think they’ll let us take away souvenirs?”
“Somehow I doubt it.” I yawned and stretched. “All right, everybody, it’s time for me to catch some shut-eye since I had the night duty shift. Rei, the course is laid in for Mars; wake me when we get close. Yuskeya, plot the shortest course to get us to Anar, and Baden, compile everything we have on our Lobor passenger, would you? Her name is Cerevare Brindlepaw.”
What else needed doing? “Maja, do you want to dig up anything we have about the Chron wars? We might as well be as well-informed as possible when we get there, and we have to make conversation with our Lobor guest. Viss, start whatever maintenance you want, and Hirin, you’ve got the chair. We could take cargo on Mars if there’s any going our way, if you want to check the job boards.”
I left them pulling hot drinks out of the machine and fixing breakfast, and headed to my quarters. Once I got some sleep, I promised myself, I would tackle some of the crew problems I’d been avoiding. I wasn’t taking this bunch of soreheads on any kind of a mission, least of all one where I’d have to answer to the Protectorate.
As I opened the door to my quarters, I allowed myself a smile. I was secretly excited to have this mission. Although I hadn’t said anything to anyone else—and this was the other thing I’d kept from Lanar—I’d been feeling rather . . . adrift, since we’d left my mother on Kiando. I’d spent decades searching Nearspace for her, following leads, wondering whether she was even still alive. Searching for the answers to my apparent agelessness, why Lanar and I stayed physically and mentally in o
ur thirties while everyone else around us aged normally. It had been my driving force, my focus, for almost fifty years. Once I’d found Mother and got my answers—the nanobioscavengers she’d introduced into our bodies decades ago—I felt a bit lost. I’d regained my husband (thanks again to the bioscavs) and my daughter, but still—the direction and drive that had fueled me for so long were suddenly gone.
Yes, I was quite happy to have something new to focus on. Another lesson in being careful what you wish for.
SINCE SHE WAS my best friend, I decided to tackle Rei first. We were still about an hour from Mars when I woke, and when I went to the bridge Hirin told me that Rei had taken a break and headed down to the cargo deck. He made as if to get up out of the captain’s chair, but I motioned for him to stay.
“Think I’ll go see if she wants to chat,” I said.
Hirin took my arm and pulled me down so he could plant a kiss on my cheek. “For luck,” he said, then chuckled. “And in case you don’t come back. Should you go in armed?”
I stuck my tongue out at him and headed for the access hatch at the rear of the ship. I didn’t see Viss as I climbed down the ladder past the engineering deck, but I heard pounding off in the distance somewhere. I shook my head. I’d have to get to him, soon, too, or he’d run out of things to overhaul. I didn’t know what might happen then.
I found Rei heavily engrossed in her workout, which I could tell before I ever got near the floor of the cargo bay. Every kick, punch, block was accompanied by a scream that I could only call blood-curdling. I didn’t recall the Erian martial arts involving these verbal assaults to go along with the physical ones, so they must be simply an indication of Rei’s state of mind. She’d brought her staff with her, a thick rattan pole she’d won in a bar fight on Eri—at least, that was the story that went with it. Rei had a penchant for collecting what she called “souvenirs” of her many adventures, and they could be anything from a silk kimono to a plasma rifle. Each one came with a story, as well. The staff, with its dark, carved spiral pattern, was one of many. It echoed hollowly as she lashed out and struck the cargo pod wall with it.
Her feet were bare, and she’d stripped off the jacket of her dark green shipsuit, leaving only a pale tank now stained dark with sweat. She’d rolled the legs of her pants up to her knees and tied her chestnut hair in a severe ponytail. Sweat-soaked tendrils had come loose and curled around a face that was usually filled with humour and mischief—when it wasn’t so angry.
She didn’t acknowledge my arrival and kept on attacking invisible opponents, so I shucked my jacket and kicked off my own shoes. I approached her warily, arms up in a guard position. I didn’t say anything, but I caught her eye and made a little “bring it on” gesture with the fingers of my right hand.
She grinned evilly. Or it might have been a snarl. Then she came at me. The only concession she made to our friendship was tossing aside the staff. It clattered hollowly up against the cargo bay wall.
I danced away from her initial lunge and brought a hand down on her arm when she was off-balance. She whooped joyously and spun around, aiming a kick at my kidney. I blocked it, pushed her leg sideways, and twisted. She ducked into a rolling fall and sprung up, agile as an Erian snowcat, six feet away from me.
It was my turn to attack, and I led with a feint, trying to get her off balance. When I managed to land a light blow on her shoulder, she laughed, a sound I hadn’t heard in too long. Even though sweat rapidly soaked the back of my t-shirt and my daily tae-ga-chi workouts apparently didn’t keep me in the shape I needed for this, I redoubled my efforts. Anything for a friend.
I lost track of time, but finally we stood, panting, a few feet apart, neither one of us willing to make the next move. Rei’s chestnut hair plastered in rings against her neck, and her bare feet were red from pounding on the floor of the cargo pod. But she’d stopped screaming a few minutes ago and had started to smile. I blinked sweat from my eyes.
“Had enough?” I managed to gasp.
She swallowed. “I think so.” She straightened and expelled a huge sigh, stretching her arms over her head and arching her back. Then she stepped forward and hugged me, hard.
“Damne, that felt good,” she said. “Thanks, Luta.”
I returned the hug, then pulled away, putting my hands on her shoulders and giving her a little shake. “I won’t say, ‘anytime’—you’re too hard on me. I’ll be sore for a week. Now, I hope you’re ready to talk. What’s going on with you, Rei?”
She walked over to the cargo pod wall and leaned her back against it, sliding down until she sat on the floor next to her discarded staff. I walked over and sat beside her, drawing my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. The stretch in my spine felt fabulous.
She pulled the elastic out of her hair and ran her hands through the knotted strands, pulling the damp ends apart. “I got dumped.”
I bit down on the words that immediately came to mind—all this about a man?—pursing my lips to keep them still. “Mm-hmmm?”
Rei tilted her head to one side and eyed me through long lashes. “By my fiancé.”
“The one on Eri,” I said. I’d only found out about his existence a few weeks earlier, second-hand through Maja. Apparently they’d be getting married, according to Rei, “when he’s old enough.” With so much else happening, I simply hadn’t had a chance to ask Rei more about this intriguing side of her life, about which I’d known nothing. She and Baden had had a casually sexual, on-and-off relationship before he’d met Maja, but that was their business as long as it didn’t interfere with life aboard the ship, and it never had. But when the mysterious message had come from Eri, she’d turned into some kind of wild thing.
“How many did you think I had?” she asked dryly.
“Well, I didn’t actually know about any,” I reminded her.
“Yes, the one on Eri,” she said with a sigh. “Raled. Sweet thing, completely compatible, only a year to go and he’d have been old enough to marry. Eighteen,” she added, when she saw the question in my eyes.
“So what happened?”
“Raled decided,” she said, “that he was better suited to a contemplative life than to one with me. He joined the Order of Xama three weeks ago, sent me a polite note explaining things, and that, as they say, is the end of that.” She leaned her head against the cold plasteel wall and banged it lightly a few times.
“Ah,” I said. “Well, it’s understandable that you’d be sad—”
Her head whipped around to face me. “Sad? I’m not sad. Sad is when your pet dies. Sad is when someone gets hurt. I’m not sad about Raled. I’m humiliated.”
I didn’t say anything else right away, waiting. I didn’t want to put my foot in it again.
“On Eri,” Rei said, “marriages are arranged about ninety percent of the time.”
“I knew that, but not exactly how it works.”
“The mothers take care of it, on both sides. Usually when the boys are about ten and the girls are about eighteen. They won’t get married until the boys reach eighteen, so the girls are encouraged to stay in school or choose a career early, do whatever they want before they’re tied down to a family.”
She paused, and I said, “Sounds reasonable enough. What do the boys think of it?”
Rei chuckled. “There are remarkably few complaints. They get mature, experienced, and still young wives who are mentally ready to start families. Then it’s their turn to stay in school or start their careers, with their wife’s guidance. The wife usually has savings by this time to support the family until the man gets settled, and she retains some financial independence.”
“Arranged marriages went out of fashion a long time ago on Earth,” I mused. “How do they usually work out?”
“Marriage is usually a fifteen-year contract, and the clock resets on the birth of each subsequent child. So if it’s not working out, you can go your own ways once your youngest child is fifteen. Or if you’re both happy, renew the registration.”
/> “What if one—or both—of the intended partners turns out to have different sexual preferences?”
She shrugged. “No problem. That’s a completely legitimate reason to dissolve an engagement. The mothers have to scramble then to find another suitable partner, and the logistics are a little different, but it’s not that big a deal.”
“And nobody is humiliated,” I suggested.
Rei sighed. “Right.”
“It seems a little structured for the men and more lenient for the women,” I mused cautiously. I didn’t want to offend her, since she’d never told me any of this before. I figured there must be a reason.
But Rei shook her head. “It’s only more structured for them when they’re young and foolish,” she said. “That’s when they need more guidance, anyway. They get their freedom later, when they’re better able to handle it.”
“Well, if it works, it works,” I said. “But to get to the real point of this conversation, what are you going to do now?”
She blew out a long sigh, leaning forward to wrap her arms around her knees. “Good question. I know all my options, but none of them are very appealing. At least I don’t feel so angry now.” She glanced up at me with a smile. “I needed something real to vent on, I think.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “You can wait on me hand and foot when I can’t move tomorrow. So what about those options?”
She tipped her head back and stared up at the cargo pod ceiling, vaulted high above us. The cargo pods were good thinking spaces, a break from the more confined spaces of the rest of the ship.
Finally, she said, “Okej. I could go to Eri and ask my mother to arrange a new match. But it would be extremely embarrassing, and she’d either have to find a boy from the current batch of pels—the young boys—which wouldn’t be easy since their mothers are considering girls almost ten years younger than I am, or find an ulan, a boy a little older who for some reason is still without a mate.” She pulled a disconsolate face. “And there are usually reasons for that, some of them not very pleasant.”
Nearspace Trilogy Page 32
