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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: A Working of Stars
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“For all intents and purposes, they’re sus-Peledaen. This station is an asset, and they want either to take it or to deprive the fleet-family of its use.”
“Damn,” said the Command-Ancillary. “They sure picked the right time for an attack, if that’s the case. The station’s too close to completion for us to abandon it and start over on a new one, but not close enough to defend itself or go into complete camouflage mode.”
“Passive shows minimum five ships,” the
Dawning’s
Pilot-Principal said. “Three of them talking among themselves, unknown code.”
“They’re getting a fix on us,” Hafdorwen said. “Rig two transmitters on different frequencies. We’re going to play some games.”
“The intruders have turned,” reported the Pilot-Principal. “Their new axis of advance is toward our current location.”
“Let’s draw them off from the station,” said the captain.
The Command-Ancillary looked shocked. “And leave the station unguarded?”
“You have a better idea?” Hafdorwen asked. “We can’t fight five ships. We’d be hard-pressed to fight two. No, listen—what I want to do is transmit a message to myself, drop into the Void and back out again, make a reply to myself, do another in-and-out of the Void, and then send a message again. Jump back and forth, sending a message on a different frequency each time, so it’ll look like two ships transmitting.”
“That’ll be tough, Captain.”
“Do it,” Hafdorwen ordered. “The family expects more of us than merely making the attempt.”
 
SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE SUS-DARIV GUARDSHIP
GARDEN-OF-FAIR-BLOSSOMS
SUS-RADAL GUARDSHIP
EASTWARD-TO-DAWNING
SUS-PELEDAEN GUARDSHIP
COLD-HEART-OF-MORNING NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER: SUS-
RADAL ASTEROID BASE NEARSPACE
 
T
he whole board’s lighting up,” Command-Tertiary Yerris said to Fleet-Captain Winceyt, aboard
Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms.
”Lots of communications coming in. We can’t break them.”
“Then get me lines of position on them,” Winceyt said. “And everyone look sharp. One way or the other, before we sleep again this will all be over.”
“We have a ripple,” Yerris said. “Dropout. More ships coming in.”
“They’re getting reinforcements,” Winceyt said. “Where?”
“By a cluster of large asteroids, Sector Three Green.”
“We’re working on that problem,” said the
Garden’
s Pilot-Principal. Her eyes were hot and eager—she at least, Winceyt reflected, had a good reason for hoping to find someone to fight. “Using the stored data—if we assume anything that vanished after the second squawk was a ship—we have a number of tracks, converging over there. Confirm Sector Three Green.”
“Put a beacon in that direction,” Winceyt ordered. “Mark it. Now tell me more about those people who are out there doing the transmitting.”
“Working … working … got them!” exclaimed the Pilot-Principal. “Their locations are jinking all over the place. I can’t make a course or speed on either one, but we have a bunch of signals from locations TA-38 and RN-22.”
“I want everything you can pull out of those numbers,” Winceyt said. “And while you’re working on that, I want to see where everyone was heading. The ones who went dark. Signal to
Sweetwater-Running, Blue-Hills-Distant,
and
Path-Lined-with-Flowers.
Guide on me. Now turn toward, as soon as you have a position plotted.”
 
 
Aboard
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter,
Arekhon and Karil Estisk had stood watch-and-watch for the duration of the transit to the Void-mark on Iulan Vai’s chart. Arekhon had remained firm in his conviction that the
Daughter
needed to reach that position with all possible speed, and Karil gave up arguing with him on the first day. Now Arekhon sat sipping at yet another cup of
uffa—
at least the
Daughter’s
original sus-Radal owners hadn’t stinted on that vital part of the ship’s stores, for all that it had gotten stale. He was leaning back in the
Daughter’s
copilot’s seat, with Karil in the pilot’s seat next to him.
“I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,” she said, with a nod toward the cup in his hand. “If we ever get trade going across the interstellar gap and your people start importing proper cha’a, the
uffa
growers of Eraasi will all be going on the dole.”
“I grew up with it,” Arekhon said. “I still remember my first cup. Did I ever tell you about it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I was twelve, and there was some kind of get-together going on in the lower reaches of the house. It was late at night, but I wasn’t sleepy. Na’e was head of the family already by then—our parents had died a long time before—and he and Isa were down there with the rest of them. So I got dressed, and walked down.”
He paused briefly as Karil touched a dial, making sure of the reading, and then continued when she glanced his way again.
“I went down to the forecourt, all candlelit, with quiet groups of adults standing about, and a low murmur of conversation going on. Walked right in, and stood against a wall. I knew I didn’t belong there; I knew someone would notice and send me off to bed. And I’d be so embarrassed. Publicly humiliated. And my hands were so empty. An
aiketh
was passing by, with a tray of
uffa
cups, each with a warmer. I reached out, and picked one up. If I had a cup of
uffa
in my hand, I belonged, right? Well, there it was, and it was warm in my hand. So to make it look like I belonged, like I was as sophisticated as the rest, I raised the cup to my lips and I took a drink.”
“How did you like it?” Karil asked.
“Thought I was going to die,” Arekhon said. “It was awful. Sour and scalding and nasty-tasting all at once. But if I sputtered, if I spit it out, if I vomited, everyone would have looked at me, right? But I was all grown up; I belonged there. I took another drink. And another. Until the glass was empty. I set it on a tray beside the door as I left. And that was the first time I drank
uffa.”
“And the second?”
“Nothing as dramatic. I was a fleet-apprentice by then, and I needed to stay awake.”
“Ah.” Karil smiled. “We’re coming close to drop-time. Want to warn the rest?”
“I suppose I should.” Arekhon switched on the amplified circuit to the rest of the ship. “We’ll be dropping out to realspace in a few minutes,” he said. “Stand by the engines. Depending on how well Vai’s chart has guided us in, we should be at a sus-Radal base.”
“There,” Karil said, not looking at Arekhon, her concentration on the V-meter in front of her. She twisted the silver knob below it until the two glowing green sides of the V just met, but did not overlap. Then she pressed the Lock button. She closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders to release the tension. Then she opened her eyes again and glanced out of the pilothouse window to her right. The grey mist swirled past.
“After dropout?” Arekhon tried to make the question sound casual, but his own tension came through in it despite his effort. He forced himself to relax and lean back in the copilot’s chair.
Karil moved three sliders to the right-hand end of their tracks. “This ship has the beacons set to identify us to the sus-Radal.”
As always, when she spoke in the language of the homeworlds, her speech was strongly accented. Arekhon would not have recognized the family-name if the context had not helped him, even though she was fluent enough to make herself understood on Eraasi if she needed to.
How does my Entiboran sound to her?
he wondered. He thought of the accent that Maraganha wore on her words—more of a harsh growl, not the elongated vowels Karil’s An-Jemaynan dialect added to Hanilat-Eraasian. It struck him that he’d never heard the Void-walker speak in her native tongue. The thought of speech brought another thought to mind.
“If someone comes up on comms,” Arekhon said, “let me answer them. Going by the charts, we’re going to be dropping out a long way from anywhere.”
“Well then.” Karil was looking at the dropout timer. It faded from violet to yellow. “Here we go.” She pulled back on the transit lever until it clicked into its safety slot.
The shift from Void-transit to normal space was as disconcerting as ever; Arekhon shuddered, and the light of the stars blazed up outside of the cockpit windows. Karil looked into the position-plotting scope. She paused, then adjusted the scope’s brightness and focus, as if not believing what was displayed. “This may be a long way from anywhere, but there’s a goodly number of sus-Radal ships here just the same. One big one radiating, and they’re … my goodness. Jumping.”
“Who else is out here?”
“Can’t say … want me to broadcast an Any Ship message?”
“No. Stay quiet; stay dark. See if you can find that base. Are the charts good here?”
“Oh, the charts show the same position as realspace,” Karil said. “This wasn’t that far a jump.”
“Then get us to the base. I don’t want to get in the way of whatever’s going on. And I
do
want to find Kiefen Diasul before he tears apart the working.”
“Well … the base should be over in that … looks like that large asteroid is probably it. Recognition beacon?”
“Yes.”
Karil reached to the overhead control panels, and turned a rotary switch. It made a clicking sound.
“Response … and wait a minute.” The emission-warning light was glowing, and an alert tone was coming from the bulkhead speaker. “Someone out there is using fire control.”
“Get to the base,” Arekhon repeated. “Are they searching for us?”
“No, that evaluates as a side lobe.”
“Switch on cloaking, then, and move us in.”
“That cloaking thing you guys have isn’t a hundred percent,” Karil warned him. “I’d call it thirty-five, tops, on a good day. More of a hardware enthusiast’s fantasy than anything workable.”
“Use it anyway,” Arekhon said. “If going in cloaked manages to make us thirty-five percent less obvious, I’m all for it. If there are weapons around, that is.”
“If there are weapons around?” Karil laughed. “To judge by the detection board there’s nothing but.” She ran a finger down the line of switches marked Cloak. “You got it.”
“Now, how about getting me a list of everyone out here, and positions, and all that.”
“Do I look like a fully manned bridge crew?” Karil swung her chair around until she faced Arekhon. She gestured with her hand to take in the whole of the pilothouse. “Does this look like a cruiser?”
“I have utmost faith in you.”
Karil sighed and turned back to the control console. “I expect double pay for this,” she muttered, and started scribbling notes on a scratchpad.
Arekhon noticed that he’d never turned off the intraship amplified circuit. He spoke to the audio pickup. “Maraganha, could you come up here? I need your talents.”
He sat back. His
uffa
mug was empty. Well, he could get more later. Right now he needed to get to a place where he was safe, and where the crew was safe, then see if he could link back up with Iulan Vai. She’d have a handle on what was happening. She always did.
“Somebody out there is shooting,” Karil said, looking up from the plotting scope. “It isn’t just ranging and marking anymore. And … yep, it looks like someone took a hit. Your friend Vai dropped us into a hot war zone.”
“Damn,” Arekhon said. “I thought I wasn’t going to make a habit of that.”
“Yeah,” Karil said. “Well, as long as it doesn’t spread to the galaxy in general, I’m happy. I left all my stuff back on Entibor.”
Arekhon sighed. The threads of the great working stretched out across the starfield before him, and all of them were dipped in blood. From the moment when Garrod had walked through the Void to Entibor, and all of the Demaizen Circle had joined to pull him back, the great working had claimed them all, and taken their lives to give itself strength.
“The universe will come together,” he said. As he spoke he was uncomfortably aware that he wasn’t telling all of the truth.
 
 
This is where I earn my outer-family adoption,
Hafdorwen thought. Command of
Eastward-to-Dawning
and the right to call himself Hafdorwen syn-Radal were a great honor and a doorway to future advancement, but they came with a price attached and now it was time to pay up.
Hafdorwen looked at the color bar on the main display console. It showed more ships coming in, the knot in space-time that indicated a dropout from the Void. This one had arrived near the under-construction base.
“How many do they have now?” he asked.
“Minimum five,” his Command-Ancillary replied. “Maximum—who knows who hasn’t dropped out yet, or who’s dropped out and isn’t talking?”
“Let’s see if we can make it minimum four,” Hafdorwen said to the Command-Ancillary. “Transmit multiple frequencies, in the clear, asking them to state their name and business.”
“Is that wise?” she asked. “We already know why they’re here.”
“The request will come from a chase-and-go-home,” Hafdorwen said. “Launch one with the message, then do a quick in-and-out Void-transit to put us astern of them. Put me in their shadow zone, so I can see how they respond to the challenge.”
“Preparing chaser, aye,” said the Command-Ancillary. “Captain, you’re made of stone.”
“There were only four real sons-of-bitches in the universe,” Hafdorwen said. “Now two of them are dead, and I’m looking for the other one. I want three things to happen all at once. I want the chase-and-go-home’s message to arrive at their location, and set it to reen-cipher and retransmit, in case they have directional on it. I want us to drop out behind them at that same moment, while they’re distracted. And I want a firing solution on one of their vessels.”
“Aim for engines?” That was the
Dawning’
s Weapons-Principal, who’d been listening to the conversation between Hafdorwen and the Command-Ancillary with considerable interest.
“Negat,” Hafdorwen said. “I want a destruct solution. People who’ve been destroyed can’t shoot back. The opposition can afford to lose half of their ships better than we can afford to lose just us. And oh, yes,” he added, to the
Dawning’
s communications officer this time. “Prepare a message drone. Send our log back to Eraasi, so that Theledau sus-Radal will know where to start looking for us if we don’t come home.”

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