Duty Bound (10 page)

"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--

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 o 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."

About the
Authors

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
live in the rolling hills of Central Maine with three insistent
muses in the form of cats, and a large cast of characters. Best
known for their work in the Liaden Universe®, Lee and Miller have
seen published seventeen collaborative novels. Baen Books
(www.baen.com) is currently releasing all of the Liaden novels in
several omnibus volumes. The next original Liaden novel,
Ghost Ship
, will be
published in August 2011.