A Working of Stars (42 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: A Working of Stars
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“Are we going to reply to the signal?” Yerris asked him.
“Give them a minute,” Winceyt said. “Better to let them wonder if we’re friend or foe, than to answer and remove all doubt.”
“Captain, look at this,” the Pilot-Principal said. She pointed to a graph on the display console, two lines overlaid, one in red, one in light brown. “Those two who were talking to each other before. The signals were on different frequencies, and they came from different positions, but look at this. There’s a beat frequency in both of them that looks a lot like they’re using identical antennae, with an identical power source. See, here?” She poked a finger at a jagged set of lines near the right side of the display. “I’d be willing to bet my pay against yours, sir, that these two signals came from the same physical pieces of metal.”
“They were on entirely different bearings,” Winceyt said.
“Yes, sir, but look at this.” She laid in two more graphs. “These are Dopplers on the carrier frequencies. Both of those ships were engaged in one-hundred-eighty-degree turns at near-jump speeds. Not just once, but every time they were talking.”
“Two ships?”
“One, sir. Talking to itself. I’m sure of it.”
“That means—”
An alarm started wheeping before Winceyt could finish. “Sir!” Command-Tertiary Yerris exclaimed at the same time. “Someone’s lighting us up with fire control!”
 
 
The sus-Peledaen guardship
Cold-Heart-of-Morning
stood by to drop out of the Void. The
Cold-Heart’s
captain paced the bridge. If the chase-and-go-home had done its job, this was where that fleeing courier ship had been heading, and this was where Zeri sus-Dariv was going to be.
Egelt and Hussav, damn their eyes, had tried to put him off the trail and keep the honor of bringing home Lord Natelth’s missing lady all to themselves.
Forged accounting data, indeed. Do they think I was born yesterday?
But now he was here, and the two civilian operatives were cooling their heels back in muddy, exciting Ninglin Spaceport.
“On three,” said the
Cold-Heart’s
Pilot-Principal. “Two, one, mark. Drop out.”
“What do you have?” the captain asked the Command-Tertiary once the blackness of deep space had replaced the swirling grey pseudosubstance of the Void in the
Cold-Heart’s
bridge windows.
“Asteroid field,” the Command-Tertiary replied. “And I’m seeing power sources in use. Five, no, six ships.”
The
Cold-Heart’s
captain felt a pang of apprehension, and suppressed it. “Emissions?”
“Picking something up. Clear transmission, identifying the transmitting station as … sus-Dariv, sir!”
Damn. Egelt and Hussav are turncoats, and we’ve been had.
“That’s the mutineers from Serpent Station, damn and blast them,” the captain said. “Let them know that we’re here and that we mean business. Range them with fire control. Communications, give me all-frequencies. Max gain. Family cipher, the share-with-the-sus-Dariv version.”
“You have it, sir.”
The
Cold-Heart’s
captain keyed on the ship-to-ship audio. “Unknown sus-Dariv craft. This is sus-Peledaen guardship
Cold-Heart-of-Morning
You are under our command and control. Stop your engines; switch on your locator beacons. Send us your crew lists. Prepare to be boarded.”
 
SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE SUS-DARIV GUARDSHIP
GARDEN-OF-FAIR -BLOSSOMS;
SUS-RADAL GUARDSHIP
EASTWARD-TO-DAWNING
SUS-PELEDAEN GUARDSHIP
COLD-HEART-OF-MORNING FIRE-ON-THE-HILLTOPS:
SUS-RADAL ASTEROID BASE NEARSPACE
NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER:
ERAASIAN FARSPACE
 
V
ai knelt on the deckplates of the docking bay with the other members of Arekhon’s Circle—Narin and Ty, and the stranger who had named herself the very last of Demaizen. The cold air of the bay made her injured arm ache bitterly, distracting her from proper meditation; she thought with longing of the infirmary back at the Old Hall, and its first-class medical
aiketen.
The sus-Radal base didn’t have anything nearly as good, only a basic care setup and a stasis box for transporting home anything worse. The ships would have better gear than the station did.
Of course, the people who usually work here spend most of their time trying not to get hurt … in the Circle, it’s different.
Then the universe flared up in silver light all around her as she saw Arekhon go down under Kief’s last crushing blow, and she knew why the meditation had not claimed her as it should.
I’m not part of Demaizen anymore.
The insight came down on her with an impact as profound as the strike that had driven ’Rekhe onto the deckplates.
I am the one who watches, and who keeps safe what is needed for the finish of the working.
A few feet away, the woman who had come with ’Rekhe in
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
rose from her kneeling position and stepped forward.
“Kiefen Diasul,” she said, lifting her staff in salute. “I am the last of Demaizen and the First of all the Mage-Circles, and I challenge you for the great working. Let it be done as the universe wills.”
To Vai’s amazement, Kief’s battered and bloodstreaked features lit up in a smile of pure delight. “So in one thing, at least, my workings do prevail!” he said—and then staff met staff in a blow and counter that echoed off the walls of the bay.
Vai didn’t have time to watch them any longer. Arekhon was lying motionless a few feet away from where they fought, and the eiran around him twisted and flickered with a fitful, diminishing light. She got to her feet, her balance awkward with one arm useless, and went over to kneel beside him.
“’Rekhe,” she said. Then, louder, “’Rekhe!”
He opened his eyes—barely opened them; his face was swollen from the blows it had taken—and said, coughing, “What? Vai—”
“Get up,” she said, under the noise of the fighting nearby. She struggled to work her good shoulder under Arekhon’s arm on what looked like his less-injured side. “I’m going to try and move you out of here. Help me as much as you can—”
“I don’t know if I—I’m hurt, Vai.”
“You’re damned near
dead!”
she snapped, and had to shake her head to dash away the tears that threatened to fill her eyes and destroy her vision. “But there’s an infirmary here, and if we can get you in there, you’ll be all right.”
“Kief—”
“Your friend is with him. Your fight is over.”
“It’s not,” he insisted. “It’s just beginning. I should be dead. I should give my power to the working.”
“Be quiet,” she said. “Save your strength. The universe will need it later.” And as she spoke, she knew that she spoke true.
He
was
quiet, which was worse, as she dragged his increasingly limp and unprotesting body across what felt like an infinity of docking bay. She looked back once, and wished she hadn’t—the blood trail stretched out behind them in one long, red streak.
Inside the infirmary, all the lights were dim. She ignored the medical
aiketh
that had done the patch-and-go on her arm—it had done better for her than a kit-in-a-box, as Kief had promised her it would, but it wasn’t anywhere near equal to mending the damage Kief had done to Arekhon. The base’s stasis box, an ugly thing that looked like nothing so much as a locker for frozen meat, occupied one whole corner of the room, powered down into resting mode, its lights and telltales dim. That would be her only hope, if she could force it open and put Arekhon inside. Then she could load the box onto a ship and get it under way for Eraasi, making sure that the line current didn’t bobble the whole time.
Working the clamps and opening the lid one-handed seemed to take forever, and heaving Arekhon up from the deck and manhandling him over the side of the box took even longer, but at last she was done.
“There,” she said. The controls on this box were automatic—stasis would kick in as soon as she clamped the lid back down and would stay in effect until the medical
aiketen
in Hanilat unclamped it again. “You’re safe now.”
 
 
Eastward-to-Dawning’s
communications officer looked up from the console and said, “The new contact is transmitting in one of the sus-Peledaen ciphers, Captain.”
“Didn’t I say that we should have invited them?” Hafdorwen said to nobody in particular. “I knew it. Put a spread of missiles out; that’ll get them thinking. Then let’s start fighting this thing.”
“We’re being targeted,” said his Command-Ancillary.
“Launch decoys, and give me some speed,” Hafdorwen said. “At least let them know they’ve been in a fight. And put a flock of antiradiation missiles back down the beam at whoever’s illuminating us.”
“One thing in our favor,” said the Command-Ancillary, as acceleration pushed them all toward the rear bulkhead, forcing the bridge crew to grab the handholds on their seats. “Everything we see out here is a target. Those guys have a different problem. They have to keep from shooting their friends.”
“I’d trade problems with them in a heartbeat,” Hafdorwen said. “Get me into fifty percent hit range on somebody. Anybody. Now.”
“Yes sir.”
 
 
Out in the asteroid base’s docking bay, Llannat Hyfid circled Kiefen Diasul, her staff blazing green in her hand. Narin and Ty knelt to either side, backs against the outboard bulkheads, marking the entire bay as a circle, the ground upon which they did their work.
Arekhon says this man has stolen another’s body
, Llannat thought.
But I know the truth. He is a replicant—perhaps the first of them all
.
That was bad and good at the same time. Kief was strong and fast, and the new body he wore was unmarked by the accumulated subtle damage of living—on the other hand, it didn’t yet have the reflexes of staff combat built into its neural pathways through years of painful practice. She could make herself open, and let her body think for her. He would have to make a conscious decision for everything he did. She threw a series of rapid blows at him, not attempting to hurt him as much as to tire him, to keep him from thinking of anything more than his own defense.
“I
will
break the great working,” he said. “Even if the last of Demaizen has come from the other end of time to keep it whole.”
“I’ll follow you to the other end of time if I have to,” she said.
“Not if I end it here.”
Kief launched into his own series of blows, attempting to use the power of his wrists and shoulders to overmaster Llannat’s defenses, forcing her back, smashing through. She slipped and turned his blows, but with each one she gave up ground, a pace at a time, backing toward the archway where the force field kept in the air. One cracking, stinging blow sent pins into the palm of her hand, and she gasped and leapt backward.
“You’ve seen the interstellar gap. What could be more broken than that?” she asked, regaining her breath and slashing under Kief’s guard to crease his abdomen, nearly losing her weapon as it caught in the fabric of his shirt. She took a step back, away from the deep recesses of the station, closer to the force field and the stars. “Why keep apart what needs to be drawn together?”
“Knots and threads and cords and ties,” Kief snarled. He slashed down with his staff against her exposed forearm, at the same time taking her wrist in his free hand, grasping cruelly, fingers digging into her flesh. He pushed her and she staggered back a step, farther still from where Narin and Ty knelt, closer to the bay’s opening. “They’re all snares to catch and bind us, to keep us prisoner and force us into the working. I want none of it.”
“And the galaxy bleeds for centuries because one man stood aside and said, ‘This is no work of mine.’” They were almost at the force field now. Llannat twisted her wrist outward, breaking Kief’s grip, at the same time laying her staff into the crook of his elbow, where it caught like a toggle—and let herself fall backward.
Her booted foot caught him in the abdomen as she lifted him up and over and threw him, flailing, into and through the force field at the mouth of the docking bay. Designed to let through spacecraft and other things larger and slower than molecules of air, the force field let him pass. He fell out and away, continuing his arc freed now from the station’s artificial gravity. His staff clattered to the deck.
“May the Void take your refusal, and all of your workings with it,” Llannat said at last. She lay on the deck, panting, and did not stir.
 
 
“The sus-Dariv always were a sneaky bunch,” the
Cold-Heart’s
captain said. “Who’d have thought they were tight enough with the sus-Radal to use their base for a fallback position? We should have suspected.”
“We’re being targeted,” said the
Cold-Heart’s
Pilot-Principal. “Someone’s got fire control on us.”
“Launch decoys, and gang all the controls to my panel,” the captain said. “Put some antiradiation missiles back down the beam at whoever’s illuminating us. Centerline pod. At least let them know they’ve been in a fight.”
“One thing in our favor,” the
Cold-Heart’s
Command-Ancillary said. “Everybody we see is a target. The sus-Dariv have to keep from shooting each other.”
“I’d trade problems with them,” the captain said. “Because let’s be honest, they’ve got some powerful incentives to miss each other and hit us—most of a fleet and half a family’s worth of incentives. Do you think they’ll care that we were on pirate-chasing duty over by Aulwikh while their fleet was getting destroyed?”
“Say what?”
“Word is, Fleet-Captain sus-Mevyan was wiping out all of their friends and drinking buddies.”
“How do you know?” asked the Command-Ancillary.
“If you haven’t heard, then you weren’t listening in the right places. sus-Mevyan was off on some secret mission at the exact same time as the sus-Dariv had their problems, and in the same sector. When she came back, she wouldn’t talk. I know her, and that isn’t like her. I can add two and two as well as the next man, and so can the sus-Dariv. There are no secrets.”
“If that’s what was done, it was badly done,” the Command-Ancillary said. “People can’t go breaking custom like that.”
“We not only could; we did,” said the captain. “No one asked me up front. But it’s our problem now. sus-Dariv’ll fry us the second they get the chance. Engines, stand by. And get a report drone ready to launch.”
 
 
Zeri sus-Dariv was sitting in the second seat on
Fire-on-the-Hilltops
when Lenyat Irao dropped his ship out of the Void. “I know I don’t know anything about starships,” she’d said earlier, when Len looked dubious. “But neither does anybody else on board now, except for you. And I
am
the head of the sus-Dariv.”
That had been several minutes ago. Now Len said, “Stand by for Void-emergence,” and she felt the ripple of internal disquiet that had accompanied all of their dropouts so far. The swirling iridescent grey pseudosubstance of the Void fell away from the bridge windows, and she saw the stars.
“Now I know why you like this job,” she said, after her breath returned.
“Nothing like it,” Len agreed. “The first time I ever saw it, I said to myself I was damned if I was ever going to look for dirtside work again. And so I—wait a minute.”
Zeri didn’t like the sudden change in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Too many ships out there,” he said, “and the ship-mind is reporting signals in at least three different ciphers. sus-Dariv and sus-Radal—”
“Syr Vai said that the rendezvous was technically in sus-Radal territory,” Zeri said. “I don’t think she expected to find a ship here, though.”
“Well, for once Iulan
etaze
guessed wrong,” Len said. “The ship-mind says that we’re looking at sus-Radal’s
Eastward-to-Dawning.
A guardship, damn all the luck. And the other cipher—”

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