Crystal Soldier (37 page)

The owner of that particular toy tended to stay well back, not wanting to catch her mates in the field. Cantra had a singed sleeve out of her near encounter with an energy-wave, and didn't want to risk another.

The others were keeping her busy, and it was starting to look bad—then she saw an opening, slid in with the knife, and came out slashing, which took both out of the dance with one move, snapped off a shot in the direction of the energy-bearer, and spun.

Between her and her ship were four prone bodies. Further on, there was Jela, visible through the transparent walls of the gangtube, wasting no time.

Behind her, she heard a shout, and looked over her shoulder to see the door standing open and a dozen more combatants racing into the docking area.

She got her legs moving and bolted for the—

A wall of fire slammed into and through her.

She screamed, scarcely hearing her own voice through the crackle of energy, and dropped to the stone floor, rolling. Her 'skins—her 'skins were on fire, which wasn't possible, and she was gagging on acrid smoke, rolling—and then not, as she was hauled to her feet by one arm.

Karmin grinned, his grip on her arm lost in the other, larger pain, and hefted his knife, the point darting toward her face.

She jerked back, stronger than he'd been expecting. She broke his hold, the knife notched her ear, and she fell heavily to the floor. She was baking, suffocating; she could feel her dermis crisping in the heat of her 'skins destruction.

Jela would have made the ship by now . . . 
she thought with absolute clarity.

There was a gurgling sound, quite near at hand, followed by yells, shouts, curses, and a peculiar whistling. Cantra was kicked—and kicked again where she lay.

The heat from her 'skins seemed somewhat less—or her nerve endings were overloaded; she opened her eyes—and took in the sight of Pilot Jela, three down and bleeding, and himself wielding something that to her dazed sight seemed to be a long ceramic whip.

As she watched, Karmin leapt back from the hiss of the whip, then feinted in, knife flashing—

The whip snapped; the knife and a finger fell away.

Karmin shrieked and whirled aside, the remainder of those still standing following. Jela let them go, and dropped to one knee beside her.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

" . . . not sure . . . " she managed in a voice ravaged by smoke.

"Right." he said. "I'm going to carry you. It's probably going to hurt."

It did.

She passed out.

CANTRA HAD LOST consciousness, and that was good, since the best he could do for her was a rough-and-ready shoulder-carry.

The Batcher recon squad was off the field, which was good as far as it went, and he was willing to bet it went less far than he'd like.

They were in; the hatch was down and sealed against trouble— and that was very good, though an immediate lift was in order.

Which was a problem, given the pilot's state and the fact that the board had been closed—and likely gimmicked and he had no idea what she'd done.

Well, he'd figure it out or he wouldn't. First order of business was his pilot's health. He didn't want to think too closely about the damage she'd likely taken. The energy generated from the shorted circuitry and support systems would, he hoped, have mostly discharged outward, and the fact that she was still breathing was an indicator that her injuries weren't too serious.

He hoped.

The hatch to the piloting tower stood open, the tower itself on dims. The board was showing a sprinkling of orange stand-bys. The tree sat snug in its corner, leaves still.

Jela received an impression of wariness as he swept past on his way to the cubby and the
sheriekas
regeneration unit.

His boot broke the beam, the door slid back, releasing an eddy of cooler air. Cantra over his shoulder, he sank to one knee by the side of the chill black box, and triggered the release.

The hatch rose silently to reveal the unsettling green-lit interior. Jela got Cantra down on the pallet as gently as he could, straightened her, and got to his feet as the hatch began to descend—

Stopped. And reversed itself. The interior green light shifted to an even more unsavory violet, and it didn't take a Generalist to parse the fact that the unit found the offering not up to spec.

Horrified, he bent forward, fingers on her throat. If she'd died . . .

The pulse under his fingers was sluggish, her breathing shallow and raspy—but she was alive.

"Object to pilot 'skins, do you?" he muttered, but it made sense. The blasted remains of the internal systems might still interfere with whatever process the regenerator used to effect its healings.

There wasn't much room to work, and he had a bad moment when it looked like the magseals had fused, but he managed to get the 'skins off her. She moaned once or twice during the process, but mercifully didn't float back to the here-and-now.

He worked fast—if she went into shock, he'd lose her quick—and tried not to think about the damage he was doing. Not all the energy had dissipated outward. Not nearly all. Tears rose, and he blinked them back.

"You've seen worse," he told himself, shakily, and kept working.

Behind his eyes—an image: A halfling dragon stretched along a bed of dry leaves, its long neck at too sharp an angle, one wing twisted and vane-broken, the wide eyes dull.

"No," he said, out loud, and the image faded.

It was done. He threw the blasted 'skins to the deck and knelt there, unable to look away from the ruin of his pilot until the hatch came down and locked her away from him.

Another image formed behind his eyes—thunder heads boiling over the distant shoulders of mountains, lightning dancing between the clouds.

"On my way," he whispered, and got his feet under him.

He approached the orange-lit board, and frowned. It had been locked all the way down to deep sleep, on the pilot's own orders, the last time he'd seen it.

There were a number of ways to gimmick a piloting board, some more fatal than others. He wished he had a precise reading on how much Cantra had distrusted the Uncle. He sat himself down in the pilot's chair, engaged the webbing and studied the situation.

The status lights showing stand-by were main engine, weapons, and navigation brain. The combination tickled a pattern at the back of his untidy mind. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize a blank screen, but instead of a clarification of the thought, he got thunder heads again, augmented this time with an evil, edgy wind that snapped mature branches like twigs—

"Not helpful," he muttered. "If I don't get this right, my guess is that neither of us will see a thunderstorm again."

The wind died; the storm clouds dissipated. The internal screen went blank—no.

Another image was forming—lightning again, one single orange bolt, blazing into and merging with a second; the doubled force striking down into water.

"Not—" he began—and the image repeated, with an edge of impatience to it: One bolt, two, one, strike.

Jela blinked.

"She wouldn't have . . . "

But she might have. A pilot's first care was her ship, after all. And to what length might a pilot who dared not let her ship fall into the hands of someone who was a little too fond of
sheriekas
-made goods go?

His fingers, apparently placing more faith in tree-born intuition than his thinking mind, were already moving across the board, taking them off-line in deliberate order: nav-brain first; then the main engine; lastly, the guns.

Satisfyingly, the stand-bys went dark. Jela sighed—and jumped as the board came abruptly live. The internal lights came up; blowers started; and behind him the door to the tower slid shut.

Screens came on-line, showing him cannon in the docking area; and the comm opened, admitting a man's breathless voice.

"Surrender yourself and the ship, and you will be well-treated. Attempt to lift and this habitat will defend itself."

If a pair of quad cannons was the best they could field, leaving wasn't going to be a problem.

He reached to the weapons board, pulled up the ranging screen, acquired the target—and stopped, finger on the firing stud.

"Dulsey," he said, and saw a flicker of green at the back of his eyes. Hole the habitat, which
Dancer's
guns were fully capable of doing, and there was a chance Dulsey wouldn't live through the experience.

He thought of Cantra, dependent for her life on alien technology that was itself dependent on the well-being of the ship it traveled in.

"Surrender yourself!" The demand came again; a woman's voice this time, sounding more angry than scared.

"Well," Jela said to the tree. "I think we can take what they've got to dish out."

Quickly, he put the weapons to rest, and slapped the shields up. He thought of the defenses his former ships had carried, and was briefly sorry. He thought of Cantra again—and engaged the engines.

Dancer
leapt away from the dock. In the screens, the cannon flared, the shot so hopelessly bad that he reflexively checked the scans—and thereby discovered bad news.

The route outspace—and there was only one reasonable route outspace, as there had only been one reasonable route in—was crossed and re-crossed with what appeared to be ribbons of colored light.

Particle beams.

"This might be rough," Jela told the tree, as he brought the shields up high. "We've got a field of charged beams to get to the other side of."

A legitimate merchanter would have foundered, its shielding shredded by the beams before it had passed the halfway point.

Dancer
, with her up-grade shields and her quick response to con, had a better chance of surviving than that legitimate merchanter, not quite as good a chance as a real military craft.

He brought the guns up, knowing he might be needing them as soon as he was clear of the defenses . . . and now they were ready.

The field wasn't extensive; just enough to be nerve-wracking, and they lost a layer of shielding before they got through it, but through they came, guns at ready, and the pilot in the mood for a scrap.

He was unfortunately disappointed; there was no
sheriekas
-built battle cruiser—or even an armed corsair—awaiting them at the maze's end. Only the dust and the emptiness of the Deeps.

"Now what?" he asked the tree, but no answering flash of images appeared behind his eyes.

Scans reported no beacons; even the chirping that had guided them in was silent. And he was no Cantra yos'Phelium, able to pilot blind and—

"Fool!" he snapped at himself, his fingers already calling up the nav-brain, hoping that for once in her life she'd followed a standard protocol and recorded the—

She had. Jela sat back in his chair with an absurd feeling of relief.

"All we have to do," he told the tree, like it was going to be easy, "is follow our own path back out."

He had never done such a bit of piloting himself, but he had talked to pilots who had.

And what else did a Generalist need besides knowing that something could be done, and a bit of luck?

HE WATERED THE tree, ate a high-cal bar and drank a carafe of hot, sweet tea.

He slept, webbed into the co-pilot's chair, one ear cocked and one eye half-open.

He cleaned house, thinking unkind thoughts about the Uncle the while, and retrieved his belt and the captured disruptor from the lock, throwing the hand into the recycler, and swabbing the deck clean of blood.

He consulted the charts, and he consulted the tree.

He tried the comm.

He checked the first aid kit. Several times.

He went over the charts again, ate a high-cal bar, and had another nap, during which he debated with himself—maybe—weighing ship's safety against the necessity of reporting in.

When he woke, he compromised. He set course for Gimlins, and locked it, but did not initiate. Instead, he kept her shielded and quiet in the Shallows, pending the pilot's accepting the route.

That done, he sent his query again.

No ack from his primary.

No ack from the back-up.

No ack from use-this-only-in-extreme-emergency.

Growling, he extended a hand to sweep the comm closed—and pulled up sharply as the incoming dial lit.

Hope rising, he watched the message flow onto the screen—

My very dear Pilot Cantra, and esteemed M. Jela—

Please accept my sincere apology for the inconvenience surrounding your departure from our humble habitat. I hope neither of you has taken lasting harm from the incident.

I do very much thank you for your assistance in identifying certain of my children who have become somewhat over exuberant in their pursuit of our common goal.

Dulsey asks that I send you her warmest personal regards, to which I will add my own hope that you will consider my family as your own.

Uncle

Jela closed his eyes, tasting dust in his mouth. Wearily, he sent the message into the pilot's queue, then shut down the comm and went to check the first aid kit.

The smooth black box sat as it had for the last four ship-days, lid down, doing whatever it did, however it did.

He had to take it on faith that the thing was working; that it would have given some notification, had Cantra died in the course of its treatment. Her injuries had been terrible, he had seen that for himself; he didn't dwell on the question of whether they were survivable.

He'd taken counsel of the tree, which was wary, but willing to wait. Himself, he was getting impatient, and had decided to give the thing two more ship-hours to finish up, or at least provide a status report, before he opened the lid himself.

Standing over the damned box, he admitted to himself that he might have made a mistake. What he could have done instead—that was the sticking point.

"Damn' Ms," he muttered. "Always know better."

Except when they didn't.