Читать книгу The Space Opera MEGAPACK ® - Jay Lake - Страница 5

BREATH’S DUTY, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

DELGADO

Leafydale Place

Standard Year 1393

In his youth, fishing had bored the professor even more thoroughly than lessons in manners, though he had more than once made the excuse of fishing a means to escape the overly-watchful eyes of his elders. Over time, he had come to enjoy the sport, most especially on Delgado, where the local game fish ate spiny nettles and hence could be hooked and released with no damage to themselves.

It was an eccentricity his neighbors, his mistress, and his colleagues had come to accept—and to expect. Periodically, the professor would set off for the lake region and return, rejuvenated, laden with tales of the ones that had gotten away and on-scale holograms of the ones that had not.

So it was this morning that he parted comfortably from his mistress, tarrying to share a near-perfect cup of locally-grown coffee with her—the search for the perfect cup and the perfect moment being among her chiefest joys—and with his pack of lures, dangles, weights and rods set off for the up-country lakes.

The car was his other eccentricity—allowed however grudgingly by the collegiate board of trustees, who were, after all, realists. The work of Professor Jen Sar Kiladi was known throughout the cluster and students flocked to him, thus increasing the school’s treasury and its status.

The car was roundly considered a young person’s car. While fast, it was neither shiny nor new; an import that required expensive replacements and a regimen of constant repairs. Its passenger section had room enough for him, occasionally for his mistress, or for his fishing equipment and light camping gear. Not even the board of trustees doubted his ability to drive it, for he ran in the top class of the local moto-cross club and indulged now and then in time-and-place road rallies, where he held an enviable record, indeed.

The local gendarmes liked him: He was both polite and sharp, and had several times assisted in collecting drunk drivers before they could harm someone.

His mistress was smiling from her window. He looked up and waved merrily, precisely as always, then sighed as he opened the car door.

For a moment he sat, absorbing the commonplaces of the day. He adjusted the mirrors, which needed no adjustment, and by habit pushed the trimester. The sun’s first rays slanted through the windshield, endowing his single ring with an instant of silvery fire. He rubbed the worn silver knot absently.

Then, he ran through the Rainbow pattern, for alertness.

The car rumbled to life at a touch of the switch, startling the birds napping in the tree across the street. He pulled out slowly, nodded to the beat cop he passed on the side street, then chose the back road, unmonitored at this hour on an off-week.

He accelerated, exceeding the speed limit in the first few seconds, and checked his mental map. Not long. Not long at all.

* * * *

He grimaced as he got out of the car—he’d forgotten to break the drive and now his back ached, just a bit. He’d driven past his favorite fishing ground, perhaps faster there than elsewhere, for there was a lure to doing nothing at all, to huddling inside the carefully constructed persona, to forgetting, well, truly, and for all time, exactly who he was.

The airfield was filled to capacity; mostly local craft—fan-powered—along with a few of the flashy commuter jets the high-born brought in for their fishing trips.

On the far side of the tarmac was a handful of space faring ships, including seven or eight that seemed under constant repair. Among them, painted a motley green-brown, half-hidden with sham repair-plates and external piping, was a ship displaying the garish nameplate L’il Orbit. The professor went to the control room to check in, carrying his cane, which he very nearly needed after the run in the cramped car.

“Might actually lift today!” he told the bleary-eyed counterman with entirely false good cheer.

As always, the man smiled and wished him luck. L’il Orbit hadn’t flown in the ten years he’d been on the morning shift, though the little man came by pretty regular to work and rework the ship’s insides. But, who knew? The ship might actually lift one day; stranger things had happened. And given that, today was as good a day as any other.

Outside the office, the professor paused, a man no longer young, shorter than the usual run of Terran, with soft, scholar’s hands and level shoulders beneath his holiday jacket, staring across the field to where the starships huddled. A teacher with a hobby, that was all.

An equation rose from his back brain, pure as crystal, irrevocable as blood. Another rose, another—and yet another.

He knew the names of stars and planets and way stations light years away from this place. His hands knew key combinations not to be found on university computers; his eyes knew patterns that ground-huggers might only dream of.

“Pilot.” He heard her whisper plainly; felt her breath against his ear. He knew better than to turn his head.

“Pilot,” Aelliana said again, and half-against his own will he smiled and murmured, “Pilot.”

As a pilot must, he crossed the field to tend his ship. He barely paused during the walk-around, carefully detaching the fake pipe fittings and connections that had marred the beauty of the lines and hidden features best not noticed by prying eyes. The hardest thing was schooling himself to do a proper pilot’s walk-around after so many years of cursory play-acting.

L’il Orbit was a Class A Jumpship, tidy and comfortable, with room for the pilot and co-pilot, if any, plus cargo, or a paying passenger. He dropped automatically into the co-pilot’s chair, slid the ship key into its slot in the dark board, and watched the screen glow to life.

“Huh?” Blue letters formed Terran words against the white ground. “Who’s there?”

He reached to the keyboard. “Get to work!”

“Nothing to do,” the ship protested.

“You’re just lazy,” the man replied.

“Oh, am I?” L’il Orbit returned hotly. “I suppose you know all about lazy!”

Despite having written and sealed this very script long years ago, the man grinned at the ship’s audacity.

“Tell me your name,” he typed.

“First, tell me yours.”

“Professor Jen Sar Kiladi.”

“Oho, the schoolteacher! You don’t happen to know the name of a reliable pilot, do you, professor?”

For an instant, he sat frozen, hands poised over the keyboard. Then, slowly, letter by letter, he typed, “Daav yos’Phelium.”

The ship seemed to sigh then; a fan or two came on, a relay clicked loudly.

The screen cleared; the irreverent chatter replaced by an image of Tree-and-Dragon, which faded to a black screen, against which the Liaden letters stood stark.

“Ride the Luck, Solcintra, Liad. Aelliana Caylon, pilot-owner. Daav yos’Phelium co-pilot, co-owner. There are messages in queue.”

There were? Daav frowned. Er Thom? his heart whispered, and he caught his breath. Dozens of years since he had heard his brother’s voice! The hand he extended to the play button was not entirely steady.

It wasn’t Er Thom, after all.

It was Clonak ter’Meulen, his oldest friend, and most trusted, who’d been part of his team when he had been Scout Captain and in command such things. The date of receipt was recent, well within the Standard year, in fact within the Standard Month…

“I’m sending this message to the quiet places and the bounce points, on the silent band,” Clonak said, his voice unwontedly serious. I’m betting it’s Aelliana’s ship you’re with, but I never could predict you with certainty…

“Bad times, old friend. First, you must know that Er Thom and Anne are both gone. Nova’s Korval-pernard’i…” Daav thumbed the pause button, staring at the board in blank disbelief.

Er Thom and Anne were gone? His brother, his second self, was dead? Anne—joyful, intelligent, gracious Anne—dead? It wasn’t possible. They were safe on Liad—where his own lifemate had been shot, killed in Solcintra Main Port, deliberately placing herself between the fragging pellet and himself… Daav squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the horrific vision of Aelliana dying, then reached out and cued the recording.

“…Korval-pernard’i. The name of the problem is the Department the Interior; their purpose is to eat the Scouts. Among other things. One of those it swallowed is your heir, and I don’t hide from you that there was hope he’d give them indigestion. Which he seems to have done, actually, though not—but who can predict a Scout Commander? Short form is that he’s gone missing, and there’s been the very hell of a hue and cry—and another problem.

“Shadia Ne’Zame may have discovered his location—but the Department’s on the usual bands—monitoring us. Listen to Scout Net, but for the gods’ sweet love don’t attempt to use it!

“Shadia’s due in any time and I’ll send a follow-up when she gets here. You’d scarcely know the place, with all the changes since your training.

“If you’ve got ears for any of us, Captain, now is when we need you to hear.” There was a pause, as if Clonak was for once at a loss for words, then:

“Be well, old friend. If you’ve heard me at all…”

It ended.

Daav stared for a moment, then punched the button for the next message.

There was no next message. Days had gone by and Clonak had not followed up.

Daav shifted in his seat, thinking.

Desperate and under the shadow of a pursuing enemy, Clonak had found him. And Clonak had not followed up. Suddenly, it was imperative that Daav be somewhere else.

He flicked forward to the microphone.

“This is L’il Orbit, ground. I think I’ve got the problem fixed now. I’m going to be checking out the whole system in a few minutes. If I get a go, I’ll need you to move me to a hot pad.”

“Hot damn, L’il Orbit, way to go!” The counterman sounded startled, but genuinely pleased. “I’ll get Bugle over there with the tractor in just a couple!”

“Thank you, ground,” Daav said gravely, already reaching for the keyboard.

“Hello,” he typed.

“Go,” said maincomp.

“Complete run: Flight readiness.”

“Working.”

So many years. His brother and sister dead. His son in trouble. The son he wasn’t going to be concerned with after all. And somehow the Juntavas was mixed around it.

Scout Commander. Daav sighed. Scouts were legendary for the trouble they found. The trouble that might attend a Scout Commander did not bear thinking upon.

The ship beeped; lights long dark came green. He touched button after button, longingly. Lovingly.

He could do it. He could.

He had left all those battles behind.

“Ground,” he said into the mike, the Terran words feeling absurdly wide in his throat, “this bird’s in a hurry to try her wings. Everything’s green!”

“Gotcha. We’ll get you over to the hotpad in a few minutes. Bugle’s just got the tractor out of the shed.”

Daav laughed then, and laughed again.

It felt good, just the idea of being in space. Maybe he could talk to some of the pilots he’d been listening to for so long—He grimaced; his back had grabbed.

Right. Easy does it.

And then, recalling the circumstances, he reached to the keyboard once more.

“Hello,” he typed. “Weapons check.”

* * * *

“I’m not a combat pilot, either, Shadia. I think we did as well as might expected!”

The gesture in emphasis was all but lost in the dimness of the emergency lighting.

“I swear to you, Clonak—they’ve murdered my ship and if they haven’t killed me I’m going to take them apart piece by piece, and if they have killed me I’ll haunt every last one of them to…”

The muffled voice went suddenly away and the mustached man raised his hand to signal the separation. The woman shrugged and braced her legs harder against the ship’s interior, bringing her Momson Cloak back in contact with his as they sat side by side on the decking behind the control seats, using the leverage of their legs to hold them in place in the zero-g.

“We bested them,” the man insisted. “We did, Shadia—since the fact that we’re somewhere argues that their ship isn’t anywhere.”

There was a snort of sorts from within the transparent cloak. “I’m familiar with that equation—my instructor learned it from the Caylon herself! But what could they have been thinking to bring a destroyer against a ship likely to Jump? You don’t have to be a Caylon to know that’s…”

Her gesture broke the contact again and the near vacuum of the ship’s interior refused to carry her words.

Shadia leaned back more firmly against Clonak’s shoulder, the slight crinkle sounding from the cloak not quite hiding his sigh, nor the crinkling from his cloak.

She glanced at him and saw him shaking his head, Terran-style.

“Next shift, Shadia, recall us both to put on a headset. As delightful as these contraptions are, I’d like us to be able to converse as if we weren’t halflings in the first throes of puppy-heart.”

She laughed gently, then quite seriously asked, “So you think we’ll have a next shift, at least? No one on our trail?”

He sighed, this time turning to look her full in the face.

“Shadia, my love, I doubt not that all is confusion at Nev’Lorn. The bat is out of the bag, as they say, and I suspect the invaders have found themselves surprised and disadvantaged.”

He nodded into the dimness, eyes now seeing the situation they’d left behind so suddenly when the Department of Interior attacked them.

“The ship most likely to have followed was closing stupidly when last we saw it—closing into your fire as well as the sphere of the Jump effect of the hysteresis of our maneuvers. They would have been with us within moments, I think, if they had come through with us.”

Clonak gestured as expansively as the Cloak allowed.

“Now—what can I say? We’ve come out of Jump alive. If we’re gentle and lucky the ship may get us somewhere useful. Perhaps we’ll even be able to walk about unCloaked ere long; with hard work and sweat much is possible. You will remember to tell people that you’ve seen me sweat and do hard work when this is over, won’t you, Shadia? When our present situation is resolved—then we will consider the best Balance we might bring against these murderers.”

He sighed visibly, used the hand-sign for “back to work,” with a quick undernote of “sweat, sweat, sweat.”

She smiled and signaled “work, work, work” back at him.

Clonak stretched then, unceremoniously lifting himself off the floor and away from Shadia. Steadying his feet against the ceiling of the vessel he brought his face near hers and touched left arm to left arm through the cloaks.

“Shadia, I must give you one more rather difficult set of orders, I’m afraid. I know my orders haven’t done much good for you lately, but I pray you indulge me once more.”

With his other hand he used the Scout hand-talk, signifying a life-or-death situation.

She nodded toward his hand and he closed his eyes a moment.

“If you find that, against chance, we are brought again into the orbit of the Department of the Interior, if they verge on capturing us—you must shoot me in the head.”

He flicked an ankle, floated accurately to the floor again, belying the cultivated image of old fool, and he looked into her startled, wide eyes.

“Just dead isn’t good enough, Shadia; they’ll have medics and ’docs. Do you understand? There must be no chance that they can question me. They cannot know what I know, and they cannot know who else might know it.”

Clonak tugged gently on her elbow, and she uncurled to stand beside him, stretching herself and near matching his height.

His hand-talk made the motion demanding assent; she responded in query, his in denial…and he leaned toward her until cloaks touched again.

“I know, Shadia, neither of us were raised to be combat pilots. It is thrust upon us both as Scouts and as pilots. My melant’i is exceedingly clear in this. I can tell you only one thing right now—and little enough it is to Balance my order, I know.”

Her hand signaled query again and his flicked the repeated ripple that normally would signify a humourous “all right, all right, already…”

“What I know,” he said into his cloak and through the double crinkly life-skins to her ears, “is the name of the pilot they are afraid of. And having made this one pilot their enemy, they now must be the enemy of us all.”

* * * *

The math was easy enough, if not quite exact. There were a dozen Momson Cloaks per canister; each of the two installed canisters had eleven left. There were two replacement canisters, and a backup. The emergency kit built into each of the conning seats held a pair of individual Cloaks, as well. Out of an original eight eights to start there were now five dozen and two to go.

Math is a relentless discipline: It took Shadia down the rest of the path almost automatically. Each Cloak was designed to last an average sized Terran just over 24 hours—Momson Cloaks were, after all, standard issue devices on cruise ships plying the crowded space of the Terran home system—but they were conservatively rated at 30 hours by the Scouts.

Perhaps 40 standard days then, Shadia thought, if usage was equal and none of the units bad, if…

She saw the flutter of a hand at the edge of her vision as Clonak signaled for attention; he leaned forward and they touched shoulders as he spoke:

“Not as bad as all that, Shadia—we’ve got some ship stores too, and the spacesuits themselves, if need be, and there might be a way to…” She glanced at him sharply and he pointed toward her right hand.

“I’m not a wizard, child. You were counting out loud.”

Shadia rolled her eyes. It was true. She’d been waiting for the battery powered gyroscope in the auxiliary star-field scope to stabilize with half her mind and with the other half she’d been doing math on her hand.

She bowed carefully amid a sea-noise of crinkling. “Thank you for your notice,” she said formally, while her free hand chuckled out the sign for “Why me?”

His reply in finger-talk, also with the underlying ripple of a chuckle, was simply “Breath’s duty.” He pulled away, a rough-trimmed wire conduit clutched carefully through the transparent Momson Cloak, and floated toward the open overhead panel. Shadia likewise turned back to her task in progress.

The ship’s tiny forward viewports were automatically sealed by Jump run-up; they were blind unless they could get power back to those motors or use the auxiliary scope to see straight away from the ship.

And now the star-field scope was stable enough to run: Despite Clonak’s protestations, he’d managed to perform wizard’s work on the back-up electrical system and the device was ready to operate. It was not what one might hope to be using to determine one’s position after an interrupted Jump-run, but she’d used less in training.

As she bent to the scope she sighed a breath—and then another. Breath’s Duty, indeed. Every child on Liad was made by stern Delm or fond grandfather to memorize the passage, which had come virtually unchanged through countless revisions of the Code. Unbidden, portions came to her now, recalled in the awkward rhythms of childish singsong.

“Breath’s duty is to breathe for the clan as the clan allows, Breath’s duty is to breathe the body whole, Breath’s duty is to plan for the clan’s increase, Breath’s duty is to keep the Balance told, Breath’s duty is to…”

Carefully, she adjusted the star-field scope. To be useful, she needed to recognize any of the several dozen common Guides—her usual choice was the brilliant blue-white Quarter main giganova—or find a star within disc-view. Disc-view, of course, was optimum. With the auxiliary scope even a basic scan could take a day.

“Breath’s duty is to keep the Balance told,” she muttered, and noted the gyroscope’s base setting. There were a lot of degrees of space to cover, and time moved on.

* * * *

It was L’il Orbit and not Ride the Luck that docked at Delgado’s smallest general-flight orbiting docks; and Professor Jen Sar Kiladi it was who made a series of transfers to and from accounts long held in reserve. The shuttle trip to the larger commercial center, as well as the various library connections and downloads, were made by a student invented some years before by the professor; and the tools purchased at the local pawn establishment were paid for, in cash, by a man with a brash Aus-Terran accent and super-thin gloves.

* * * *

“I’m here to fix your nerligig,” the little man told the morning guy behind the bar.

“Ist broke?” the bartender wondered. The device sat in its place, motionless—but it was always motionless at this time of the day, local ordinance requiring the Solemn Six Hours of Dawn to match that of the spiritual city Querna on the planet below.

“Repair order!” said the man, vaguely Aus, waving a flimsy in the air and lugging his kit with him. “I’m good, I’m expensive, and I’m on my night differential.”

He looked like one of those semi-retired types: just the kind of guy who’d know how to keep an antique nerligig running.

The bartender shrugged, waved the man and his tools toward the ailing equipment, and poured a legal drink into one glass and its twin into another then gave them both to the customer at the end of the bar.

“Hey, asked for one drink—right?”

“Solemn Six, bud! Can’t sell youse that much in one glass this time of the day…”

The repairman shook his head, set up his tools, adroitly removed the wachmalog and the bornduggle from the nerligig, and waited patiently for the boss.

* * * *

The boss was a heavyset Terran, and he traveled today with three guards. He came in looking tired and his guards swept by, checking out the patrons, glancing at the bartender, reconnoitering the restrooms…

It was the boss who saw the nerligig guy, professionally polishing one of the inner gimbag joints.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded.

The guy glanced at him out of serious dark eyes. “Time to do scheduled maintenance.”

The boss grimaced, but gave the correct reply.

“I don’t need nothing fancy today.”

“Dollar’s greener when you do,” said the man, polishing away.

“At’s awful old.”

The repairman looked up, eyes steady—

“I only come out at night, you know.”

The boss looked at the bartender, sighed, and watched his guards stand importantly around the bar for a moment.

“You cost me some help today,” he said finally, turning back to the nerligig guy.

The man shrugged.

“Good help is hard to find. Better you know before there’s a life in it.”

The boss sighed again, and waved the repair guy toward his office.

“C’mon back.”

* * * *

The office was sparely appointed; a working place and not a showplace. Daav took a supple leather chair for himself, nodding at its agreeability.

The boss sat in his own chair, rubbed his face with his left hand and gestured at his visitor with his right.

“What’s your pleasure?”

Daav opened his hands slightly with a half-shrug.

“Information. About that message…” The message that shouted the name of Val Con yos’Phelium to all with ears to hear, near-space and far. The message that had shaken him out of his professorial Balancing and brought him into the office of a Juntavas, seeking news.

The boss pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded.

“Yeah, I figure every quiet hand in the universe will want to know about that. I think it’s the first time the damned ‘danger tree’ was really used…”

Daav sat quietly, watching the man’s tired face. No effort to hide how he felt—Daav’s greeting, as old as it was, was one recognized by Juntavas on many worlds. The short form was: Help this person, he has a right to it. The person in question might be a retired sector boss, an assassin on the way to or from a run—or the whole charade could simply be a test of loyalty.

“What do you need to know?” asked the boss. “What’s the aim?”

“Everything you know. I am, let us say, a specialist in people. I can hide them and I can find them. As may be required. I’ll need the background as deep as it goes.”

The boss man gave a snort.

“I bet you can hide ’em. Standing in my own front room with a whole bag of equipment like you own the place and my guards probably can’t tell me the color of your hair or what kind of shoes you wear. Damn smooth…” He shook his head in admiration, sighed, and went on, looking straight at Daav.

“Where we are is that there’s been—a change of administration. Some of this is official and some’s not…”

Daav looked on with polite interest, no change on his face.

The boss nodded. “Right. He was asking for it if anyone was, but anyhow, politics aside, we have a Chairman Pro Tem right now, seeing how the Chairman was knifed in his own office by a Clutch turtle.”

Daav leaned forward a bit, cocking his head to one side in respectful query.

“Me too! Not what somebody’d expect. A bomb maybe, poison, even just a quiet step-down ’cause somebody had the best of him after all—but no. A pair of Clutch turtles waltzed into his office, had an argument with him, and took him out.”

The man’s gaze had strayed to his desktop; he looked up, frowning.

“The official thing is—straight from Chair Pro Tem!—that there was a busted deal, resulting from a misunderstanding, and that the former Chairman had made the mistake of threatening a T’carais with a shell-buster.”

“With the result that, in defense of his or her superior, a minion used a knife,” Daav murmured into the short silence.

The boss looked impressed, but Daav continued. “Perhaps better for all concerned: Most turtles would merely have bitten his head off, or crushed his spine…”

The boss blanched, but waved a hand and went on.

“Yeah, well, could have been. Unofficial news is that this turtle crew had come to visit twice; got themselves locked into the Chairman’s office and cut their way out through the blast wall with a knife after busting about a thousand gems, and then he had the nerve to try a fast one. Apparently these turtles are the knife clan or something—famous. And by the time the blood’s cleaned up, the Chairman Pro Tem finds out the fuss is all about two people.”

“That would be the individuals mentioned in the whisper for all worlds…” Daav suggested.

The boss smiled wanly.

“Yes, that’s them. The turtles—this is official!—claim them to be ‘a brother and sister of the Spearmaker’s Den’ who must be returned unharmed or self-declared free and safe.”

Daav looked into the ceiling, momentarily lost in thought. When he looked back, the boss was reaching into a desk drawer for a candy.

“What, may I ask, is the or?”

The boss looked grim.

“The or is that if they don’t turn up safe the Juntavas will be wiped out, starting at the top. This is a promise.”

Daav leaned forward, raised his hand to his chin and rubbed it thoughtfully.

“This is,” he said after a moment, “a very, very serious problem. No one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle lying. Certainly no one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle or clan breaking a promise. Even I might not be able to hide well enough if the Clutch knew me for an enemy.”

The boss snorted again, apparently swallowing his candy whole.

“Right. And so what I have going on, starting about the time you walk out the front door here, is a block-by-block search of every Juntavas holding on Delgado, looking for two of the damnedest trouble-makers you’ve ever heard of.”

Daav, very interested, waved his hand, asking for more information.

“Yeah, OK. One is a First-In Scout Commander! Good, right? Get in the face of somebody who can talk Clutch to the Clutch and just happens to have saved one from a dragon. You know, a nobody, a pushover. Then the other one is a Merc-turned-bodyguard, lived through Klamath and got on—and off!—Cloud.”

Daav let out a low whistle. “Do you know how many people lived through Klamath?”

The boss shrugged, tapped his desk. “That’s probably in my notes. I got more notes than you can stuff in a garbage can already about this.” He broke, searched his desktop, pulled up a flimsy image-flat, and flipped it, casually and quite accurately, to the man in the chair.

Daav listened with half-an-ear as the boss went on—the while eyes measured the photos of his son and his son’s companion.

“Getting off Klamath earns you a lifetime ‘I’m tough’ badge or something. But—this is where we come in—these two started a firefight, in broad daylight, I guess!—between the local Juntavas and the city police in Econsey, back there on Lufkit, just to cover their getaway after they robbed the boyfriend of the local boss’ daughter. Then, they managed to get off-planet while the place was under total lock-down, with everybody from the chief of planetary police down to the nightclub bouncer looking for them, and make a leisurely departure from Prime Station in a Clutch spaceship.”

Daav continued to look interested, slowly shaking his head as he listened, still taking in the no-nonsense, rather ordinary appearance of both of the missing. A master mercenary who had survived Klamath might be just the person to balance a Scout Commander, he thought.

“Story gets muddled about here,” the boss was continuing, “but somehow the local capo managed to grab them. Then he gets the news he can’t do anything to them. So he sets them off in a spaceship that’s been in some kind of a fight and can’t go nowhere. Word comes down to make sure these two are really in one piece and to hold ’em, pending the Chairman Pro Tem’s personal visit. He goes back…”

Daav didn’t have to fake the laugh.

“What could he have been thinking?” he asked. “To leave a—what was it, First-In Scout Commander?—in a spaceship and expect it not to go away?”

The boss was nodding now and gestured with the piece of candy in his left hand.

“You got it. Exactly how it was. They were gone, the ship was gone and ain’t nobody heard nothing about any of ’em since. So now I got to check Delgado and…”

Daav raised a palm.

“Please,” he said gently. “You mustn’t be overly concerned. You’ll want to do standard checks on passenger lists and such; but the people you are hunting are not likely to hide out on Delgado. Even if they’ve been here do you think a hardened merc and a First-In Scout are going to set themselves up as shopkeepers or bean-farmers?”

Before the boss could answer Daav stood, demanding a suppleness from his body he did not feel.

“I’ll need the name of the new Chairman, copies of whatever transmissions you may have, details of the former location of the missing ship—dupes of your images, as well—and I’ll be on my way. Also, I have some things for you…” He waved toward the back wall of the office and the bar beyond.

“First, the taller of your security guards stole several of your bartender’s tips, and was helping herself to the packaged snacks. That can’t be good for your business.”

The boss snorted. “Just color them gone. Hey, you’re good at what you do—but that don’t mean they shouldn’t have seen you!”

Daav nodded agreeably. “Also, you’ll want to get an explosives expert in here. There’s a small package I disconnected and took out of the nerligig—it looks like it might have been connected about six or seven dozen years ago. It may no longer be dangerous, or it may be unstable. In any case, as I am sure you understand, I hesitate to take it with me.”

The boss rubbed his forehead and nodded.

“We’ll dupe your info for you—and in the meantime I’ll call in a specialist.”

“Thank you,” said Daav and went back to the bar to put his tools away, all the while amazed that a phrase learned so long ago and so far away was still potent enough to make a Juntava jump.

* * * *

Cabin pressure was at one-tenth normal, which should have been counted as good; it signified that Clonak’s work was paying off.

Alas, Shadia did not much feel like cheering. She sat lightly webbed to the command chair, patiently doing hours of work by hand and eye that an online computer might do in a blink.

Clonak had left her to the recognition search while he worked on what he called “housekeeping.” Housekeeping entailed using a small bubble-bottle to find the worst of the leaks and then seal them with the quick-patch sit.

As for her work, so far she had only three possibles and one probable. Dust in the outer fringes of the Nev’Lorn cluster made some of the IDs difficult and she’d not yet found a near opaque patch or two that might also help her…

“Shadia?”

The sound reached her, distorted and distant.

Clonak stood behind her, almost an arm’s length away, beckoning her toward a portable monitor hooked to a test-kit. With his other hand he seemed to be fighting a control.

Indeed, the air pressure was building ever so slightly.

Noting her spot, she locked the star-field scope; by the time she got to him he was using both hands on the control. He yelled at her again through the sack-like Cloak; she could barely hear him.

“Please tell me what you see. I’m not sure this will work for long!”

What she saw, besides Clonak wrestling with a wire-filled metal tube, was devastation. The grainy monitor was showing her what would normally be her Screen Five, inspection view.

“The rear portside airfoils are gone,” she yelled, schooling her voice to the give the information as dispassionately as possible. “There is damage into the hull; I can see a nozzle—likely it’s one of the wing nitrogen thrusters, still attached to a hose—moving as if it is leaking.”

Clonak shrugged, did something else with his shoulder, and the image shifted a bit toward the body of the ship.

Shadia blinked, disoriented. The ship didn’t have a—Oh.

“The ventral foil has been blown forward and twisted—shredded. The…”

The image went blank as Clonak’s hands slipped on the tube; the Cloak vibrated with the buzz of his curse.

Shadia continued describing what she had seen.

“There’s no sign of any working airfoil components. There are indications of other structural damage. I can’t tell you about the in-system engines—the view was blocked by the ventral fin.”

Clonak sat down hard.

“That view was blocked by the ventral? Might be something left to work with if we can get some more power going…” His last few words were lost as he stared at the blank screen.

“Clonak, I have a feeling that the ship is—bent.” Shadia bent close and said it again, this time touching Cloaks shoulder to shoulder.

“Well,” he sighed. “That explains why we can’t budge the hatch.”

They both were silent for a moment; Shadia was glad for the slim comfort offered by touching someone else, even through the plastic.

The ship’s spine had taken some of the heat of the attack and the ship was out of true. The rear compartment—Including the autodoc, the sleeping alcove, and about 60 percent of the food, was accessible only if they could force the hatch against the bend of the ship.

“We have to assume,” Clonak said suddenly, “that we’re not airworthy past the hatch; obviously we won’t want to be trying any kind of atmospheric descent if we have a choice—Might be missing some hull, too.”

He straightened a bit, leaned in to her and said, “Look again. I’ll see if I can force this to scan the other side!”

Her fingers answered yes, and Clonak began twisting the cable yet again. The image reappeared and then swung suddenly, showing an oddly unflawed stretch of ship’s hull and beyond it the fluted shapes of several nozzles poking out from the blast skirts.

Beyond that was a brightness; three points of light; reddish, bluish, whitish. A local three star cluster—

“The Trio!” she said, but then there was another light, making her blink

“Stop!” she yelled, the noise over loud in her ears.

Clonak let go and the image went away. Shadia stood staring at the blank screen, seeing the stars as they had been.

“We’re still in-system,” she said, putting her arm against his. “If the Trio and Nev’Lorn Primary are lined up…”

“We’re somewhat north of the ecliptic,” Clonak concluded, “with Nev’Lorn headquarters safely on the other side of the sun.”

* * * *

The image of his son—and of his son’s partner—lay on the pilot’s seat along with the rest of the information provided by the Juntavas. Daav tried to imagine the boy—a pilot of the first water, no doubt; a Scout able to command the respect of a Clutch chieftain, who held the loyalty—and perhaps the love—of the very Hero of Klamath…

His imagination failed him, despite the recording furnished by the Juntavas boss.

The boy’s voice was firm, quiet and respectful; the information he gave regarding the last known location of his vessel only slightly less useful than a star map. The voice of Miri Robertson was also firm; unafraid, despite the message she’d clearly imparted: All is not as it seems here.

Yet, despite the image, the recording, and the records his imagination failed him. Somehow, he thought he had given over the concept of heir, of blood-child. Certainly, he should have been well-schooled by his sojourn on the highly civilized world of Delgado, where the length of all liaisons were governed by the woman and where the decision to have or not to have a child was one the father might routinely be unaware of—witness his mistress’s daughter, now blessedly off-planet and in pursuit of her own life.

Daav picked up the flimsy, staring at the comely golden face and the vivid green eyes. A Korval face, certain enough, yet—there was something else. With a pang, he understood a portion of it: the boy, whoever he was, and however he had gotten into the scrape announced to the universe at large, was a breathing portion of Aelliana. Daav projected her face, her hands, her voice at the image of their son, but that did no better for him—what he saw was Aelliana.

The boy was only a boy to him, for all they shared genes and kin.

Daav sighed and laid the picture back on the pilot’s chair. Whoever the boy was, elder kin should surely have taught him to stay away from the Juntavas. He should have been given the Diary entries to read. Er Thom knew—who better? Er Thom should have—but Er Thom was gone.

And in the end the duty had not been done, the tale had not been told, and here was the result. Briefly he wondered what other duties he’d left undone…

He’d have to find Clonak. Clonak had later news. Clonak would know what needed done, now.

He sighed then, rewebbed himself, scanned the boards, checked the coords he already keyed in from some recess of his mind, and punched the Jump button.

* * * *

They’d slept fitfully in the unnaturally silent craft, each sitting a half-watch in a Scout’s Nap. What noises were, were confined to the Momson Cloaks and their wearers. The Cloaks had a tendency to crinkle when one moved, and though the upper shoulder placement of the air-pack made wonderful sense when standing, it required some adjustment to sleep semi-curled in the command chairs in order not to disturb the airflow.

The wake-up meals were cold trail-packs, laboriously introduced into the Cloaks through the ingenious triple pocket system, a sort of see-through plastic airlock. Since the Cloaks were basically plastic bags with a few rudimentary “hand spots” the process was awkward, even for two people.

First the trail-packs were located and then held in place with lightweight clamps. Then the outer pocket was opened, with one person pulling lightly on the outer tab and the one inside the Cloak grasping the side wall of the pocket firmly and pulling back. The pocket walls separated, and the resultant bulge had a lip-like seal that was pressed until it opened. The trail-pack went into the newly opened pocket, and the outside was resealed.

The second pocket had a seal at what Shadia thought of as the bottom; by bunching the pocket up from inside it could be made to open, and the trail-pack was moved into that part of the pocket, and that seal to the outside pocket pressed tightly; now there were two seals between vacuum and food. The inner seal, finally, was opened—puffing up the part of the pocket with the trail-pack in it—and finally the food was safely inside the Cloak.

Crumbs being a potential problem, the food bars were handled gingerly and the water squeezed carefully from its bulb.

While she ate, Shadia chewed on the problem of their exact location, with regard to Nev’Lorn ’quarters—and potential rescue.

While knowing that they’d not left the Nev’Lorn system was definitely useful, the camera-monitor wasn’t the tool for finding out where they were or, more importantly, where they were headed. It was impossible to guess how much of their Intrinsic velocity and flight energy might have been transferred to the attacking destroyer and they had nearly as much chance of being in a tight, highly elliptical orbit as they did in being on the outward leg of a hyperbolic orbit that would throw them out of the system, never to return.

Thus, shortly after breaking her fast, Shadia realigned the gyroscope for the auxiliary instruments and changed her search pattern with the star-field scope. Now that she knew which end was up her job had gone from that of a hopeful pastime to an immediately useful necessity. What they might do about where they were was another matter.

On the other side of the chamber, Clonak busied himself with another semi-disassembled piece of hardware, periodically professing himself or any number of other objects, deities, and people damned, stupid, absurd, or useless.

That she could hear these footnotes to progress clearly proved that the pressure in the ship was slowly rising, in part a result of the action of the layered osmotic membranes that made up much of structure of the Momson Cloak. The finely tuned membranes purposefully released certain amounts of carbon dioxide and hydrogen while retaining some moisture; heavier users might complain of the suit “sloshing” as the moisture reservoirs filled. Far from breathable, the external atmosphere made the Cloaks a little easier to move around in.

The increased pressure also made Shadia aware of an occasional twittering sound she couldn’t place. Twice she glanced up to Clonak, hard at work but doing nothing that looked to make such a noise.

The third time she looked up, Clonak had also raised his head. He caught Shadia’s eye and smiled ruefully.

“Not rodents, Shadia, with little rat feet. More likely we have micro-sand, scrubbing the hull down to a fine polish. This system has a fine collection of unfinished planets to choose from, I’m afraid.”

“Though actually,” he continued, “that’s not all bad. If the wrong people are looking for us we’re better off here than an hour off Nev’Lorn.”

“Should we use the monitor to—”

“I’ve thought of that, but really, the best use of resources is to continue with what we’re doing. I may yet get a computer up and running and you may yet find us a safe harbor.”

There were several distinct pings and another scrabble of dust on the hull then and Shadia bent back to her charting with a will.

* * * *

Daav woke with a start, certain someone had called his name. About him the ship purred a quiet purr of circulators and the twin boards were green at every mark. The Jump-clock showed he had enough time for breakfast and exercise before he arrived back in normal space. No matter what might befall, he’d be better prepared if he kept now to routine.

He’d been to three systems so far without touching ground at any. Izviet, Natterling, and Chantor were all minor trade ports, ports that usually sported a small training contingent of Scouts making use of the nearby space.

At Izviet a ship a few years out of mode coming from a port rarely heard from was barely gossip, still he’d had the ship come in as L’il Orbit, maintaining his professorship as well. The cycle was off—there were no Scouts training near the spectacular multi-mooned and multi-ringed gas giant Cruchov. Natterling’s usual band of ecologists-in-training were out of session; the wondrous planet Stall with its surface outcroppings of pure timonioum had no company. By the time he’d hit Chantor he’d had a lot of news to digest, but there were no cadets practicing basic single-ship in that place, as he had.

Among the news chattered most widely were the rumors attending the Juntavas and their danger-tree broadcast.

Some felt it was trap, aimed at netting the Juntavas. Others explored news-pits and libraries and invented great empires of intrigue: one of these stated that the missing man now ruled a system as a Juntavas boss; another said the merc hero had bagged herself a rich one; yet another swore the pair of them had turned pirate and were staging raids against the Scouts.

What was missing in all three places was the back-net chat he would have found in an instant in the old days. In the places he would normally have found Scouts he found nothing but notes, signs, recordings: on temporary assignment, on vacation, will return, in emergency please contact—

Worse, at Chantor’s orbiting Waystation Number 9, in an otherwise dusty maildrop he’d maintained since his training days, was a triple-sealed note with all the earmarks of a demand for payment from a very testy correspondent. The return address meant nothing to him but the message had chilled him to the very bone.

“Plan B is Now in Effect,” it said in neat, handwritten, Liaden characters.

No signature. He recognized the handwriting, familiar to him from his former life, when he had been Delm Korval and this man had taken hand-notes of his orders. dea’Gauss. He felt a relief so intense that tears rose to his eyes. dea’Gauss was alive. Or had been. He blinked and looked again at the note. The date was not as recent as Clonak’s news.

Plan B: Korval was in grave danger.

He drew a breath and felt Aelliana stir, take note, and finally murmur in his ear: “Whatever has happened? Surely the Juntavas have not caused this?”

The intership chatter had been tense with other rumors; civil wars, Yxtrang invasions, missing spaceships, Juntavas walking openly in midports in daylight.

Daav had debated destinations. Lytaxin—world of a solid ally. Liad itself was surely to be avoided with Plan B in effect!

He sat to board, finally, and, having thought Lytaxin, his fingers unhesitatingly tapped in another code. This was a destination only for Scouts and the adventuresome curious; there was no trade there, nor ever had been. Well.

“Well,” Aelliana affirmed, and he gave the ship its office.

Now, with an hour yet to Jump-end, Daav hesitated before switching his call signals. No need to give away all his secrets, even to Scouts. He set the timer and moved back to begin his exercises. Ride the Luck would call him before they arrived at Nev’Lorn.

* * * *

Shadia reached to the canister overhead, pulling the red knob that was both handle and face mask. Obligingly the canister gave up its package, the plate descending to shoulder height. Grasping the disk carefully she twisted the red handle. It turned properly in her hand and the initial three minutes of air began flowing from the mask as the Cloak began taking shape. She pushed it toward the floor, stepped into the tube, and as it inflated by her head, she grabbed the blue handle and pulled. That closed the Cloak over her head and with a twist of vapor from the heat seal she was now inside the new Cloak while wearing the old.

Now she reached for the blade on her belt and carefully pierced the diminished Cloak, and writhing awkwardly, stepped out of it, perhaps spicing her language a bit to help, and then a bit more as the old Cloak tangled on her ankle and left her sitting in mid-air. With exasperation she used a few more choice words, asked a couple of pungent questions of the universe at large and cut a bit more with the knife. In another moment, the old Cloak was a mere wrinkle of plastic and a disk, which she handed it through the pockets of the new Cloak with relief.

She stuffed it into the waste bin, which was filling rapidly, and surveyed the work area, realizing as she did that she hardly registered the more minor sounds of the space dust on the hull.

Over in the corner, Clonak ter’Meulen, supervisor of Pilots, was tampering with a Scout issue spacesuit, breaking thereby a truly impressive number of regulations. He had replaced his Cloak nearly a Standard hour before and now sat immersed in carefully deconstructing the suit, with an eye toward keeping the electronics intact.

More or less conversationally—the atmosphere in the ship having gotten up to near 20 percent of normal—he bellowed inside his Cloak.

“Shadia, I hadn’t realized you’d spent so much time around Low Port…”

She almost laughed and did manage to snort.

“Doubtless, I hurt your ears…”

“Well, at least you’ve hurt my feelings.”

She looked at him quizzically.

Clonak glanced away from his work, moving his hand inside the Cloak to pull out a bit of paper towel and mop his brow before continuing.

“I clearly heard you ask whose, ahhh…whose idea the Cloaks were. Very nearly they are mine!”

Shadia blinked.

“Are you Momson, then?”

“Me, Momson? Not a bit of that, at all.” Clonak continued, still busily taking the suit apart. “Momson is some legendary Terran inventor, I gather. No, but the Cloaks—they’ve only been on Scout ships for about 25 years. But then, I guess you could blame Daav yos’Phelium, too, for having the bad judgement to need a Cloak when he didn’t have one…”

“But I thought the nameplate says that some Terran foundation gave us the money to start installation.…”

“Right you are. The Richard A. Davis Portmaster Aid Foundation. But I’m afraid that’s my fault. They have a wonderful archive—at least equal to the open Scout collections!—and I was looking for quick solutions. Headquarters was already moving me into this pilot support track I’ve ended up in, you see, and dea’Cort himself set me on them.”

“When it turned out that we didn’t need anything all that esoteric, really, the research librarian was pleased to hand me over to the so-called Implementation Office and they had me walking around in one of these things inside a day. I brought a dozen dozen back for testing and barely a relumma after I had posted off my thank-you note, Headquarters sent me off on a secret mission—to pick up a shipload of these things, complete with dispenser canisters.”

“Secret mission?” Shadia snorted. “They didn’t want other Scouts to know you were getting all the plush flights?”

Clonak chuckled briefly at his work.

“Actually, it was far more sinister than that. There’s always a faction in the Council of Clans that wants to shut funding for the Scouts off, or reduce it. Some of them don’t want us doing anything that might benefit Terrans, or they want us to charge for our work, or be turned into pet courier pilots for the High Houses. The idea that we might somehow be in debt to a Terran foundation had to be kept super mum.”

Shadia heard the crinkle of the Momson Cloak about her as she shook her head Terran-style and then flipped the hand signal roughly translating as “Stupidly assessing the situation, them, as dogs might.”

One-handed Clonak replied with “Affirm that twice.”

Before Shadia could turn back to her work Clonak stretched himself, permitting his legs to float higher than his head, and held up a series of electronic modules linked by tiny flat cables. At the end of the cables were several tiny power units.

“Shadia, what you see here is the work of a genius,”

“Of course,” she said politely.

Clonak ignored her. “It’s too bad that I nearly destroyed it getting it out of the suit. I can see several more modifications I’ll need to make, and then a box-lot of paperwork once we are joyfully returned to Headquarters.…”

Shadia sighed. “What is it?”

“A working transceiver set, of course! What else could it be? Now all we need to do is decide what we might safely say, on what frequency, and how often, for the right people to hear and fetch us away from this lovely idyll of shared pleasure.” He moved a shoulder and his feet sank deckward. “I believe we will need your location report by the end of the shift, and since I’m essentailly done with this I’m available to act as your clerk.”

* * * *

Ride the Luck broke into normal space and reported that all was well. Three breaths after, the position report center screen was replaced by a tile of alarms and warnings as the meteor shields went up a notch and the Scout’s private hailing frequency was crowded by messages and fragments:

“…ard Jumped out before I could cross-hair him; he definitely took out dea’Ladd!”

“…was destroyed. Have adequate munitions to continue search pattern…”

Daav’s hands touched the switches which armed Ride The Luck, brought the scans online…

“…have returned fire and am hit. Breath’s duty—notify my clan of our enemy—I have three hours of air, heavy pursuit and no Jump left. Tell Grenada I forgive the counterchance debts. Notify my clan of Balance due these…”

Scans showed debris in orbits that should have been clean, and warnaways at Nev’Lorn itself.

Into a battle had come Ride the Luck, Tree-and Dragon broadcasting on all ID ports. No way to tell immediately how old some of the incoming messages might be—

Daav thumbed a switch. “Daav yos’Phelium, Scout Reserve Captain, co-pilot of packet boat Ride the Luck, requesting berthing information or assignment. Repeat…”

Before he was finished the second iteration he heard a cry of “Korval!” over the open line, and, fainter, “The Caylon’s ship!”

The chatter built and by then Ride the Luck had cataloged a dozen objects of note, including two closing tangentially.

On commercial frequency—responding to the ID no doubt—came:

“Freighter Luck you are to stand by for boarding by the Department of the Interior; you are under our weapons! Repeat—”

On the Scout frequency: “Luck, Courier 12 here, I have you on my scans. I’m at breath’s duty, pilot! I have one salvo left before I’m gone. Get away and tell Clan Kia the name of their enemy…”

Kia was a Korval trading partner.

Ride the Luck’s ranging computer showed the two potential targets and attendant radio frequencies; Daav touched the guidestick and clicked the red circle over one of them. The circle faded to yellow.

Still nothing from Nev’Lorn base.

“Give me my commission, dammit! Are you asleep?” Daav’s finger danced over the board: now he had the ship that had broadcast the duty message identified, and the one that had ordered him to stand by for boarding.

Again the commercial frequency—“Freighter Luck, you are under arrest by the Department of The Interior. You are to agree to boarding or we will open fire.”

As if to punctuate their demand, the Department’s ship fired a beam at Courier 12, raking the little vessel from stem to stern. And, finally:

“Ride the Luck, this is Nev’Lorn headquarters. Captain yos’Phelium, you are on roster for berth 56A. You are authorized to aid and assist in transit…”

“I have conflicting orders,” Daav spoke into the mike, both channels open.

The circle on the ranging computer showed orange now.

“This system is under direct supervision of the Department of the Interior,” came back the message rather quickly—they were closing fast. “Nev’Lorn Headquarters has been disbanded and is outlawed. Your decision, or we fire, pilot!”

Nev’Lorn, five light seconds more distant, sent again; “Captain you have a berth waiting…”

“Department, “ Daav said quietly into the mike, “I am taking your orders under advisement. You have the range on me, I’m afraid.”

The image of Courier 12 seemed to blossom then, as the pilot launched his remaining missiles at the oncoming Department ship. Eight or ten scattered, began maneuvering.

The target circle went dull red.

“Department, please advise best course?” Daav demanded.

That ship, busily lashing out with particle beams at the oncoming missiles, did not reply. The static of those blasts would have torn the transmission out the ether in any case.

The target circle grew a flashing green ring around a bright red center.

With a sigh, Scout Captain Daav yos’Phelium clutched the guide-stick and punched the fire button. And again. And again. And again and again until Ride the Luck complained about overload and the expanding gases were far too thin to contain survivors.

* * * *

Clonak’s genial optimism wasn’t sufficient to approve of the ration situation by the time end of shift had come and gone six times, postponed by the simple fact that they still had been unable to achieve complete orbital elements.Between observations and calculations they’d managed to get the test circuit live to the in-system engines and they’d determined that at least a dozen thruster pairs were operable. They might actually be able to go somewhere—if only they knew where to point.

Thanks to the cloaks the air supply was good for another thirty days. Food was another matter, since most of it was in storage lockers—if they still existed—in the sealed portion of the ship. They were stretching the interval between meals a little longer each time. At full rations they had food for six days; at their current rate they had fourteen.

* * * *

“You happened by at a fortunate time, Captain,” Acting Scout Commander sig’Radia was saying to him. “Not only did you rid us of the last of that infestation, but improved morale merely by appearing, Tree-and-Dragon shouting from your name-points, hard on the heels of rumors that Korval is…vanished.”

Daav gave her a grave smile. “Korval’s luck. May we all walk wary.”

She was a woman of about his own age, he estimated, though he did not know her. Obviously, though, she had heard tales of Korval’s luck, for she inclined her head formally and murmured, “May it rest peaceful.”

“How did this come to pass? An open attack on a Scout base by Liadens?”

Scout Commander turned in her chair and pulled a stack of hard-copy messages from under a jar full of firegems.

“Some of it is here,” she said, handing him the stack. She seemed about to speak further, but the comm buzzed then; a Healer had been found for the Kia pilot Daav had rescued from the courier boat.

He gave his attention to the messages in his hand. Slowly, a picture built of suspicious activity, followed by conflicting orders and commands from Scout Headquarters and the Council of Clans, muddied by people going missing and a strange epidemic of Scouts being requisitioned—with the assistance of some faction or another within the Council itself—for the mysterious Department of the Interior. Amid it all, a familiar name surfaced.

The commander finished her call and Daav held out the page.

“You may blame Clonak ter’Meulen on my fortuitous arrival—he having sent for me. May I see him? His business was urgent, I gather.”

She looked away from his face, then handed him another, much smaller, stack of pages. He took them and began leafing through, listening as she murmured, “The Department of the Interior had him targeted. He went down to meet a Scout just in from the garbage run—Shadia Ne’Zame. That’s when the battle began. They fired on her ship and…”

Daav looked up, face bland. Commander sig’Radia shrugged, Terran-style.

“The Department had a warship in-system—say destroyer class. They claimed it was a training vessel. They went after Ne’Zame’s ship, fired on her. By then, we were fighting here as well—open firefights and hand-to-hand between us and the Department people here for training.”

She showed him empty palms.

“Ne’Zame’s ship was hit at least once, returned fire, got some licks in. The Department’s ship was closing when she Jumped.”

Daav closed his eyes.

“The only wreckage we have is from the destroyer,” the commander continued. “There’s one piece that might be from a Scout ship—but there was other action in that section, and we can’t be certain. The destroyer was more than split open—it was shredded—no survivors. If it hadn’t been, Nev’Lorn would have been in the hands of the Department of the Interior in truth, when you came in.”

Daav opened his eyes. “No word? No infrared beacons? Nothing odd on the off-channels? Clonak is—resourceful. If they went into Little Jump…”

Her eyes lit. “Yes, we thought of that. Late, you understand, but we’ve had tasks in queue ahead. In any case, the chief astrogator gave us this.” She turned the monitor on her desk around to face him, touched a button, and a series of familiar equations built, altered by several factors.

Daav blinked—and again, as the numbers slid out of focus. As if from a distance, he heard his own voice ask, courteously, “Of your kindness, may I use the keyboard? Thank you.”

Then his hands were on the keyboard. The equation on the screen—changed—in ways both subtle and definitive. He heard his voice again, lecturing:

“The equations are only as good as the assumptions, of course. However, the basic math is sound. This factor here will have been much higher, for example, if weapons were being fired—missiles underway in particular would have altered the mass-balance of the system dynamically— and the acceleration of the destroyer — are there recordings of this incident that I may see? I believe there is a significant chance that your astrogator is correct. They may have been forced into Little Jump…”

The equations danced in his head and on the screen, apart from, but accessible to himself. Moments later, when the acting commander played back the records she had of the encounter, Daav felt an unworldly elation, and watched again as his hands flew along the keypad, elucidating a second, more potent, equation.

That done, there was a pause. He heard Aelliana sigh into his ear and found that his body was his own once more.

He looked up from the monitor to meet the scout commander’s astonished eyes. She looked away from him, to the construct on the screen, then back to his face.

“Are you,” she began. Daav raised his hand.

“Pilot Caylon finds this a very worthy project, Commander. You will understand that Clonak is her comrade, as well.” He sighed and looked at the screen. The equation was—compelling, the sort of thing a pilot could make use of. He pointed.

“Your astrogator is to be commended. As you see, we have several congruencies here. This one in particular, which relies on the orbits assumed by the destroyer’s fragments, gives us a probability cloud…”

The hands on the keyboard were his own this time, the schematic he built from his own store of knowledge.

“Very nearly we have two search bands,” he murmured; “one south and one north of the ecliptic, which of course are expanding as we speak. Clonak…Clonak is a very stubborn man.” He glanced up, meeting the commander’s speculative eyes.

“If there is someone you may dispatch to the south, I will search north of the ecliptic.” He smiled, wryly. “We may yet retrieve your Scouts from holiday.”

* * * *

“Are you ready, Clonak?”

“I am, Shadia.”

“Your authorization?”

“The ship is yours.”

“As you say.”

They’d managed to turn the ship and align it. The idea was simple. They were going to fire what in-system engines they had to decrease the size of their orbit and bring it closer to the more traveled ways of the system. The first time they’d tried, nothing happened, and Clonak had spent another two days tracing wires as Shadia refined the orbit-numbers.

The other necessity was manning the radio, making certain that ship kept an antenna-side to the primary. They were on a round-the-clock talk-and-listen, and would be until—

One of the more raspy bits of space debris in some time distracted them; it sounded almost as if it were rolling along the side of the hull. There was a ping then, and another.

“If we’re in cloud of debris—”

“It doesn’t sound too bad,” Clonak was saying untruthfully, just as a full-sized clank ran the hull. Then came more of the scratching sound, almost as if the hull were being sandpapered or—

“Well,” Clonak said softly, and then, again. “Well.” He moved to the battery-powered monitor and waved his hand at the other Scout. “Come along, Shadia. Let’s have a look!”

They crowded round the battery-powered monitor and Clonak once more turned it on and twisted the wiring until a connection was made.

The view was altered strangely with a motley green-brown object…

Belatedly, Shadia grabbed for the gimmicked suit radio and turned it on—

“Please prepare to abandon ship. This is Daav yos’Phelium and Ride the Luck. If Scout ter’Meulen is aboard, it would be kind in him to answer—one’s lifemate is concerned for his health.”

The hull rang, then, as it Ride the Luck had smacked them proper.

“Breath’s duty, but you’ve the luck,” Daav yos’Phelium continued conversationally. “The hull is twisted into the engine back here… If I do not receive within the next two Standard Minutes an answer of some sort from the resident pilots, I shall have no choice but to force the hatch. Mark. Don’t disappoint me, I beg. You can have no idea of how often I’ve dreamed of forcing open the hatch of a—”

Here, the pilot’s mannerly voice was drowned out by Clonak hammering the hull with one of his discarded pieces of piping.

It was Shadia who thumbed the microphone on the makeshift radio and spoke: “We’re here, Pilot. Thank you.”