By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (23 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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They made their way through the labyrinthine halls in silence. After a while the quiet and the tension prompted Beka into speech.
“Where’s Ignac’?”
“Damned if I know,” Jessan said. “He took the ’
Hammer
off Suivi when you gave the word—smashed her right through the dome when Port Authority wouldn’t let him go—and I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Good man, Ignac’—knows how to follow orders.”
They continued through the maze of accessways and maintenance passages. Beka suspected that the route had been chosen for its low traffic and lack of surveillance gear, not for any convenience to the shuttle bay. A few minutes later, she spoke to Jessan again.
“How did you manage to avoid getting arrested with me?”
“Tarveet apparently had me tagged as the Domina’s pet Khesatan and a harmless fribble,” he told her. “So I took considerable pains to keep everyone thinking along those lines.”
Beka smiled in spite of herself. “I’d love to have seen the act. You do such a convincing fribble.”
“What
I’d
love to know,” the young woman behind her said, “is whether our friends gave the guards at the shuttle bay enough money to make sure they stay bought.”
“They didn’t,” said Owen. “That’s what you’re sensing, Klea—ConSecs moving into place up ahead. And behind.”
“Oh, damn.” Beka stopped smiling and sagged wearily against the nearest wall.
“Make whatever peace you can with the committee after I’m dead,” she said to Jessan. “But I’m not letting them take me again.”
 
RSF
VERATINA
: GALCEN SYSTEM SPACE; GALCEN NEARSPACE
GYFFER: SPACE FORCE INSTALLATION, TELABRYK FIELD
 
I
N THE warren of tunnels and accessways that ran behind and beneath the main thoroughfares of Suivi Point, the local annunciator system switched on with an audible click.
“YOU ARE SURROUNDED. SURRENDER YOURSELVES AT ONCE.”
“Like hell,” Beka muttered. She turned to Jessan. “Remember what I said, though. If you can talk fast, you may still have a chance.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Sorry. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
“YOUR TIME IS LIMITED,” said the annunciator. “IF YOU DO NOT SURRENDER THE AREA WILL BE FLOODED WITH TOXIC GAS.”
Beka gathered up the loose fabric of her skirt in one hand and kicked off the hindering slippers. She lifted her blaster in her other hand. “I say we charge the ones up ahead, then. One … two …”
“Wait,” said Owen. “Not yet.”
She looked at her brother. “I hope you know what you’re talking about.”
“Trust me.”
“If you weren’t my own blood kin—”
“SURRENDER YOURSELVES AT ONCE. COUNTDOWN COMMENCING. TEN … NINE … EIGH—”.
The annunciator broke off in midword as the sound of a collapsor grenade rumbled through the passageways. A cloud of oily smoke rolled down the hall toward them, fading into thin mist as the environmental controls caught it and pulled it away.
“Beka!” called a familiar voice from out of the smoke. “My lady! Captain Rosselin-Metadi!”
Beka laughed, somewhat wildly, and lowered the blaster. “Pick one of those and stick with it, Ignac’—you’ll get me confused if you keep switching them off like that.”
“Captain, then.” LeSoit came forward as the last of the smoke blew away. He wore a pressure suit without the helmet, and carried a blaster in one hand. The cargo pockets of the p-suit bulged with what looked to Beka like half the contents of the ’
Hammer
’s small-arms locker. “This makes the second time I’ve pulled you out of a tight spot on Suivi Point.”
“If we stay here much longer,” Jessan said, “you may have a chance to go for three. Back the way you came?”
“That’s right.” He glanced past Beka at Owen and the young woman Owen had addressed as Klea. “Who’s the rest of the army?”
“Introductions later,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They went back through the broken wall. Beka stepped fastidiously over the bodies of several ConSecs, smashed and torn by the collapsor’s explosion. A little beyond the carnage, the hallway forked again.
“This way,” said LeSoit, pointing with his blaster.
Jessan halted. “Are you sure? The docking bays are in the other direction.”
“Don’t worry.” There was a maintenance hatch set in the wall of the right-hand passage. LeSoit bent to undog it. “We aren’t going down to the bays.”
The hatch opened into a cramped tunnel full of lines for air and power, twisted together like fat, multicolored snakes. Tubing and ductwork ran along the ceiling of the tunnel, reminding Beka of tree roots inside a dirt cave.
“Through here,” LeSoit said. He looked again at Owen. “You may want to leave the passenger behind—low overhead.”
“He comes along,” Owen said.
“Whatever you want. Let’s go.”
They hurried down the tunnel in single file, half-crouching to keep from hitting any of the pipes overhead. Beka listened to the sound of Tarveet thudding into first one hard metal excrescence and then another. Eventually LeSoit stopped at another hatch and began working it open.
“Here,” he said. “External maintenance workers’ p-suit locker. Surface lock’s nearby.”
The alcove held three pressure suits, hanging ready along the walls with their helmets and magnetic boots lined up on the shelves above. Beka recognized her p-suit from the ’
Hammer
laid out on a plast-block bench.
“Is this going to be a long hike?” she asked.
LeSoit had already retrieved his own helmet. “No.”
“Good.” She waved a hand at the suits along the wall. “All right, everybody—pick a suit and climb into it just as you are. Sooner or later the ConSecs are going to figure out where we went and when they show up we had better be gone.”
She set her blaster down on the nearest bench long enough to follow her own orders. The skirt of the gown bunched up around her waist inside the bulky p-suit, but the closure sealed without a problem. She picked up her blaster and the Iron Crown, then glanced at the others. Jessan had worked in a suit before, and so, apparently, had Owen; her brother was helping the girl Klea into hers.
She caught her brother’s eye—hard to do through the bubble helmet of a p-suit, but she managed—and asked, “How much time do we have?”
“Five minutes, three, maybe less.” His voice sounded tinny over the suit’s internal link. “They aren’t stupid.”
Tarveet still lay where Beka’s brother had dropped him in order to claim a p-suit. Now LeSoit nudged him with a booted foot. “What do we do with this one now?”
“I’m not leaving him behind alive,” said Beka.
LeSoit stooped and picked up the unconscious councillor. “A man can live in hard vacuum for two minutes. If we take him along with us he has a sporting chance.”
 
In the Combat Information Center of RSF
Veratina
, Jos Metadi sat back in the command chair and regarded the cruiser’s main battle tank with a skeptical and appraising eye. Blue dots winked on inside the tank and started moving toward the blue triangle that marked the ’
Tina
’s approximate position.
Commander Quetaya spoke quietly from her place just behind his right shoulder. “Scouts coming in, sir.”
“I see them,” he said. “Reports?”
“Prelims,” she told him. “Fast scan shows no major enemy warfleet in Galcen nearspace.”
Tyche wandered up, a mug of cha’a in his hand. “Looks like they’ve all gone away somewhere.”
“I think we can draw them out,” Metadi said.
“How?”
Metadi looked at the younger man. “To start with, Colonel, we aren’t going to overestimate them.”
Tyche looked somewhat puzzled. “‘Over’?”
“That’s right, son. Back in the last war, I got a good look at what these guys could do—and at what they couldn’t, which a lot of people missed. They’re a long way from home, and they haven’t got our resources to draw on—”
“How do you figure that, sir?” Quetaya asked.
“Stands to reason,” said Metadi. “Take it from an old pirate: stealing things is hard work. If the Mageworlders already had as much as they wanted of everything they needed, they’d never have bothered trying to get it from us.”
“Mmh,” said Tyche. He communed with his cha’a cup for a moment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Try it for a while,” Metadi advised him. “It’ll expand your options. The Mageworlders are working against limits, just like we are; and they can make mistakes and get confused, just like we do—especially if somebody pushes them a little. So we’re going to give them a couple of quick shoves and see if anyone does something stupid.”
“I see,” said Quetaya. “Exactly what kind of shoving do you have in mind?”
Metadi looked again at the array of blue dots in the battle tank, and smiled grimly. “I’m going to attack Galcen.”
Quetaya gasped. “But those are your own people!”
“No more than anybody else this side of the Net,” said the General, “and less than some.”
“I suppose … .” Quetaya still sounded dubious.
“It’s like this,” he said. “I’m betting that the Mageworlders took Galcen first thing out of the box, as soon as they broke through the Net. That’s what I’d have done, anyway. I’m also betting that their fleet isn’t very big—maybe three times the size of Galcen’s Home Fleet, a little less than four at the absolute max. Which is still small. One of our best-kept secrets, though apparently not quite well kept enough, was the relatively small size of the Home Fleet.”
Tyche looked up from his cha’a. “I’d say you had to be guessing,” he commented, “but I think I know better by now.”
“I’m guessing,” Metadi told him. “A three-to-one advantage is the least I’d want to try, and about the most they could get away with. Much more and we’d have noticed it for sure.”
He paused a moment and went on. “Now, if the Mageworlders took Galcen—and remember, we’re betting that they did—they didn’t leave any significant force behind to hold it. That tells us—it tells me, anyhow—that they don’t dare break up their fleet. Are you with me so far?”
“I’m with you,” said Tyche. Quetaya only nodded.
“Good,” Metadi said. “Meanwhile, look at us. We’re also a small force. But the Mages don’t know that. Only a strong force would dare to attack Galcen. If we take Galcen … why, then, we must be strong.”
“Respectfully, sir,” put in Quetaya, “we
aren’t
strong enough to take Galcen.”
“Of course not. But the Mages don’t know that.”
His aide still looked troubled. “The Mages can tell the future and see what happens at a distance. Making plans based on what they don’t know is foolish. Respectfully, of course. Sir.”
“There weren’t all that many Mages to start with,” said Metadi, “and there’s even fewer now: Errec Ransome made sure of that. And if Mages are anything like the Adepts I’ve known, they can’t tell if what they’re foreseeing will happen five minutes from now in the next room or fifty years ahead and a hundred light-years away.”
“So what do you propose?” Tyche asked.
“I propose to attack Galcen with everything we’ve got,” Metadi said. “We take out their communications first. Then we press the attack—making sure my name gets mentioned frequently and in the clear—until a courier ship leaves. It’ll have to be a courier, because we took out the comms. We let that courier go, then we track him and see where he’s gone. That’ll tell us where to start hunting.”
“That’s the plan?” asked Quetaya.
“Yes.”
“You’re crazy, sir. Respectfully.”
“Thanks.” Metadi smiled a little, remembering. “You know, Errec used to tell me the same damned thing, every time I had an idea. Only without the respect.”
 
The Gyfferan moons had set long ago over Telabryk Field, and the stars and planets had faded. The rising sun spread a line of golden fire all along the eastern horizon and turned the sky rose-colored halfway up to the zenith.
Ari Rosselin-Metadi shifted his position, stretched a little, and yawned. He had fallen asleep with his back against the side of the skipsled loading ramp, after watching the night sky over Gyffer with Llannat Hyfid for long hours … watching and talking, until she had drifted off with her head on his shoulder. He’d thought of picking her up and carrying her inside, but that would have meant leaving her behind afterward. Instead he’d stayed where he was, holding her, while over on the LDF side of the Field some of the Gyfferan long-range scoutships lifted off on patrol and others returned, dividing the hours of darkness with their comings and goings.
Llannat stirred and opened her eyes. He bent his head down and kissed her gently.
“Good morning.”
She smiled. “And good morning to you, too, Ari. I’ll have to sleep close to you more often … I didn’t have bad dreams.”
“It can be arranged,” he said. “If we talk to Lieutenant Vinhalyn right now before breakfast, he can get the paperwork out of the way by tonight.”
“I think I’d like that.”
He stood up and held out a hand to her. She took it—a touch, nothing more—and rose lightly to her feet.
“Let’s go, then.”
Together, they went back into the main building and down the hall to Vinhalyn’s office. The light coming through the windows was deeply golden, and Ari was filled with an incongruous sense of well-being.
This isn’t right. The Magelords have broken up the core of the civilized galaxy, the Space Force is in complete disarray, and Gyffer is first in line for everybody’s next attack. I shouldn’t feel like I want to break out singing. But I do.
His buoyant good cheer didn’t last very long. In the CO’s office, Lieutenant Vinhalyn had what looked to Ari like a holovid news feed frozen into the auxiliary battle tank.
“Rosselin-Metadi,” he said, before Ari could speak. “I was just about to send for you.”
Ari cast an apologetic glance toward Llannat: it appeared that paperwork requests would have to wait. “Trouble, sir?”

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