Duty Bound (9 page)

Worse, at Chantor's orbiting Waystation
Number 9, in an otherwise dusty maildrop he'd maintained since his
training days, was a triple-sealed note with all the earmarks of a
demand for payment from a very testy correspondent. The return
address meant nothing to him but the message had chilled him to the
very bone.

"Plan B is Now in Effect," it said in neat,
handwritten, Liaden characters.

No signature. He recognized the handwriting,
familiar to him from his former life, when he had been Delm Korval
and this man had taken hand-notes of his orders. dea'Gauss. He felt
a relief so intense that tears rose to his eyes. dea'Gauss was
alive. Or had been. He blinked and looked again at the note. The
date was not as recent as Clonak's news.

Plan B: Korval was in grave danger. He drew
a breath and felt Aelliana stir, take note, and finally murmur in
his ear: "Whatever has happened? Surely the Juntavas have not
caused this?"

The intership chatter had been tense with
other rumors; civil wars, Yxtrang invasions, missing spaceships,
Juntavas walking openly in midports in daylight.

Daav had debated destinations.
Lytaxin--world of a solid ally. Liad itself was surely to be
avoided with Plan B in effect!

He sat to board, finally, and having thought
Lytaxin, his fingers unhesitatingly tapped in another code. This
was a destination only for Scouts and the adventuresome curious;
there was no trade there, nor ever had been. Well.

"Well," Aelliana affirmed, and he gave the
ship its office.

Now, with an hour yet to Jump-end, Daav
hesitated before switching his call signals. No need to give away
all his secrets, even to Scouts. He set the timer and moved back to
begin his exercises. Ride the Luck would call him before they
arrived at Nev'Lorn.

* * *

SHADIA REACHED TO the canister overhead,
pulling the red knob that was both handle and face mask. Obligingly
the canister gave up its package, the plate descending to shoulder
height. Grasping the disk carefully she twisted the red handle. It
turned properly in her hand and the initial three minutes of air
began flowing from the mask as the Cloak began taking shape. She
pushed it toward the floor, stepped into the tube, and as it
inflated by her head, she grabbed the blue handle and pulled. That
closed the Cloak over her head and with a twist of vapor from the
heat seal she was now inside the new Cloak while wearing the
old.

Now she reached for the blade on her belt
and carefully pierced the diminished Cloak, and writhing awkwardly,
stepped out of it, perhaps spicing her language a bit to help, and
then a bit more as the old Cloak tangled on her ankle and left her
sitting in mid-air. With exasperation she used a few more choice
words, asked a couple of pungent questions of the universe at large
and cut a bit more with the knife. In another moment, the old Cloak
was a mere wrinkle of plastic and a disk, which she handed it
through the pockets of the new Cloak with relief.

She stuffed it into the waste bin, which was
filling rapidly, and surveyed the work area, realizing as she did
that she hardly registered the more minor sounds of the space dust
on the hull.

Over in the corner, Clonak ter'Meulen,
supervisor of Pilots, was tampering with a Scout issue spacesuit,
breaking thereby a truly impressive number of regulations. He had
replaced his Cloak nearly a Standard hour before and now sat
immersed in carefully deconstructing the suit, with an eye toward
keeping the electronics intact.

More or less conversationally--the
atmosphere in the ship having gotten up to near 20 per. cent of
normal--he bellowed inside his Cloak.

"Shadia, I hadn't realized you'd spent so
much time around Low Port..."

She almost laughed and did manage to
snort.

"Doubtless, I hurt your ears..."

"Well, at least you've hurt my
feelings."

She looked at him quizzically.

Clonak glanced away from his work, moving
his hand inside the Cloak to pull out a bit of paper towel and mop
his brow before continuing.

"I clearly heard you ask
whose, ahhh....whose
idea
the Cloaks were. Very nearly they are
mine!"

Shadia blinked.

"Are you Momson, then?"

"Me, Momson? Not a bit of that, at all."
Clonak continued, still busily taking the suit apart. "Momson is
some legendary Terran inventor, I gather. No, but the
Cloaks--they've only been on Scout ships for about 25 years. But
then, I guess you could blame Daav yos'Phelium, too, for having the
bad judgement to need a Cloak when he didn't have one..."

"But I thought the nameplate says that some
Terran foundation gave us the money to start installation...."

"Right you are. The Richard A. Davis
Portmaster Aid Foundation. But I'm afraid that's my fault. They
have a wonderful archive--at least equal to the open Scout
collections!--and I was looking for quick solutions. Headquarters
was already moving me into this pilot support track I've ended up
in, you see, and dea'Cort himself set me on them."

"When it turned out that we didn't need
anything all that esoteric, really, the research librarian was
pleased to hand me over to the so-called Implementation Office and
they had me walking around in one of these things inside a day. I
brought a dozen dozen back for testing and barely a relumma after I
had posted off my thank-you note, Headquarters sent me off on a
secret mission--to pick up a shipload of these things, complete
with dispenser canisters."

"Secret mission?" Shadia snorted. "They
didn't want other Scouts to know you were getting all the plush
flights?"

Clonak chuckled briefly at his work.

"Actually, it was far more sinister than
that. There's always a faction in the Council of Clans that wants
to shut funding for the Scouts off, or reduce it. Some of them
don't want us doing anything that might benefit Terrans, or they
want us to charge for our work, or be turned into pet courier
pilots for the High Houses. The idea that we might somehow be in
debt to a Terran foundation had to be kept super mum."

Shadia heard the crinkle of the Momson Cloak
about her as she shook her head Terran-style and then flipped the
hand signal roughly translating as "Stupidly assessing the
situation, them, as dogs might."

One-handed Clonak replied with "Affirm that
twice."

Before Shadia could turn back to her work
Clonak stretched himself, permitting his legs to float higher than
his head, and held up a series of electronic modules linked by tiny
flat cables. At the end of the cables were several tiny power
units.

"Shadia, what you see here is the work of a
genius,"

"Of course," she said politely.

Clonak ignored her. "It's too bad that I
nearly destroyed it getting it out of the suit. I can see several
more modifications I'll need to make, and then a box-lot of
paperwork once we are joyfully returned to Headquarters...."

Shadia sighed. "What is it?"

"A working transceiver set, of course! What
else could it be? Now all we need to do is decide what we might
safely say, on what frequency, and how often, for the right people
to hear and fetch us away from this lovely idyll of shared
pleasure." He moved a shoulder and his feet sank deckward. "I
believe we will need your location report by the end of the shift,
and since I'm essentailly done with this I'm available to act as
your clerk."

* * *

RIDE THE LUCK
broke into normal space and reported that all was
well. Three breaths after, the position report center screen was
replaced by a tile of alarms and warnings as the meteor shields
went up a notch and the Scout's private hailing frequency was
crowded by messages and fragments:

"...ard Jumped out before I could cross-hair
him; he definitely took out dea'Ladd!"

"...was destroyed. Have adequate munitions
to continue search pattern..."

Daav's hands touched the
switches which armed
Ride The
Luck
, brought the scans
online...

"...have returned fire and am hit. Breath's
duty--notify my clan of our enemy--I have three hours of air, heavy
pursuit and no Jump left. Tell Grenada I forgive the counterchance
debts. Notify my clan of Balance due these..."

Scans showed debris in orbits that should
have been clean, and warnaways at Nev'Lorn itself.

Into a battle had
come
Ride the Luck
, Tree-and Dragon broadcasting on all ID ports. No way to tell
immediately how old some of the incoming messages might
be--

Daav thumbed a switch.
"Daav yos'Phelium, Scout Reserve Captain, co-pilot of packet
boat
Ride the Luck
, requesting berthing information or assignment.
Repeat..."

Before he was finished the second iteration
he heard a cry of "Korval!" over the open line, and, fainter, "The
Caylon's ship!"

The chatter built and by
then
Ride the Luck
had cataloged a dozen objects of note, including two closing
tangentially.

On commercial frequency--responding to the
ID no doubt--came:

"Freighter
Luck
you are to stand by
for boarding by the Department of the Interior; you are under our
weapons! Repeat--"

On the Scout frequency:
"
Luck
, Courier 12
here, I have you on my scans. I'm at breath's duty, pilot! I have
one salvo left before I'm gone. Get away and tell Clan Kia the name
of their enemy..."

Kia was a Korval trading partner.

Ride the Luck's
ranging computer showed the two potential targets
and attendant radio frequencies; Daav touched the guidestick and
clicked the red circle over one of them. The circle faded to
yellow.

Still nothing from Nev'Lorn base.

"Give me my commission, dammit! Are you
asleep!" Daav's finger danced over the board: now he had the ship
that had broadcast the duty message identified, and the one that
had ordered him to stand by for boarding.

Again the commercial
frequency--"Freighter
Luck
, you are under arrest by the
Department of The Interior. You are to agree to boarding or we will
open fire."

As if to punctuate their demand, the
Department's ship fired a beam at Courier 12, raking the little
vessel from stem to stern. And, finally:

"
Ride the Luck
, this is Nev'Lorn
headquarters. Captain yos'Phelium, you are on roster for berth 56A.
You are authorized to aid and assist in transit..."

"I have conflicting orders" Daav spoke into
the mike, both channels open.

The circle on the ranging computer showed
orange now.

"This system is under direct supervision of
the Department of the Interior," came back the message rather
quickly--they were closing fast. "Nev'Lorn Headquarters has been
disbanded and is outlawed. Your decision or we fire, pilot!"

Nev'Lorn, five light seconds more distant,
sent again; "Captain you have a berth waiting..."

"Department, " Daav said quietly into the
mike, "I am taking your orders under advisement. You have the range
on me, I'm afraid."

The image of Courier 12 seemed to blossom
then, as the pilot launched his remaining missiles at the oncoming
Department ship. Eight or ten scattered, began maneuvering.

The target circle went dull red.

"Department, please advise best course?"
Daav demanded.

That ship, busily lashing out with particle
beams at the oncoming missiles, did not reply. The static of those
blasts would have torn the transmission out the ether in any
case.

The target circle grew a flashing green ring
around a bright red center.

With a sigh, Scout Captain
Daav yos'Phelium clutched the guide-stick and punched the fire
button. And again. And again. And again and again until
Ride the Luck
complained
about overload and the expanding gases were far too thin to contain
survivors.

* * *

EVEN CLONAK'S GENIAL optimism wasn't
sufficient to approve of the ration situation by the time end of
shift had come and gone six times, postponed by the simple fact
that they still had been unable to achieve complete orbital
elements.Between observations and calculations they'd managed to
get the test circuit live to the in-system engines and they'd
determined that at least a dozen thruster pairs were operable. They
might actually be able to go somewhere--if only they knew where to
point.

Thanks to the cloaks the air supply was good
for another 30 days. Food was another matter, since most of it was
in storage lockers--if they still existed--in the sealed portion of
the ship. They were stretching the interval between meals a little
longer each time. At full rations they had food for six days; at
their current rate they had fourteen.

* * *

"YOU HAPPENED BY at a fortunate time,
Captain," Acting Scout Commander sig'Radia was saying to him. "Not
only did you rid us of the last of that Infestation, but improved
morale merely by appearing, Tree-and-Dragon shouting from your
name-points, hard on the heels of rumors that Korval is
...vanished."

Daav gave her a grave smile. "Korval's luck.
May we all walk wary."

She was a woman of about his own age, he
estimated, though he did not know her. Obviously, though, she had
heard tales of Korval's luck, for she inclined her head formally
and murmured, "May it rest peaceful."

"How did this come to pass? An open attack
on a Scout base by Liadens?"

Scout Commander turned in her chair and
pulled a stack of hard-copy messages from under a jar full of
firegems.