Gates of Hell (4 page)

———

“Welcome home,” Linch greeted as Pyr and Pilsane stepped aboard the ship. “You look like shit, Dha-lrm,” he added cheerfully.

“I look like a man in need of some sleep,” Pyr answered as he pulled off his hat and shook out his long red hair.

The three of them left the Door room and walked down the long, empty corridor toward the central commons. The emptiness was odd. The
Raptor
was bigger, faster, and better equipped than any other raider in the border territory. It took more than four competent men to operate the ship efficiently. Many of the crew had died of the plague, two had disappeared with Axylel. The others—

“Let anybody loose yet?” Pilsane asked.

Linch lifted his eyebrows at Pyr. “Our leader hasn’t given that order.”

“Our leader better get himself to the dispensary,” Pilsane advised. “Those fangs must have made a messy cut.”

Pyr flexed his hand. “Too bad our medic died before we got any Rust.”

“She cost enough,” Linch complained. “I miss her.”

“You miss her because she liked music,” Pyr informed the pilot. At least that was the reason Linch gave for bringing a sixty-year-old Terran physician back from the Morkan slave market after the crew had specifically requested a pretty, young medic. Right now Pyr was glad there was no one in the dispensary who could report his little problem to anyone else on board.

“About the crew?” Pilsane questioned insistently.

Pyr ignored him as they entered the common room. Mik was seated at a long table. The room held other smaller tables, a computer station, and holo game terminals. There were doors leading to crew quarters on either side of a food prep and serving area. The common had a carelessly cluttered look, with data boards and the remains of finished meals left on the tables.

Mik had a heaped plate in front of him. He barely looked up as they entered.
The crawler belonged to Persey
, he reported, telepathic shields lowered so that everyone could catch the thought while he occupied his mouth with food.
Had nothing of interest to say, so I spaced him
.

Pilsane and Linch took seats at the table. Pyr remained standing. He took the brooch out of his pocket long enough to show the others. “We’re looking for Denvry.” He received three anticipatory smiles.

“At last!” Mik spun his chair away from the table. “Somewhere to go. Something to do.”

“Another drug runner to kill,” Linch added as he picked up the eight-stringed ligret he’d left lying across a chair. He fingered the instrument, producing an amplified, baying howl. Linch communicated with music as much as he did with words or thoughts. He continued to play quietly as they talked.

“So Denvry’s been keeping the family jewels.” Pilsane contributed.

“Possibly,” Pyr agreed cautiously. He pulled off his long coat and tossed it toward an empty chair. It landed on the deck. He raised a sardonic eyebrow at Pilsane’s annoyed look. “Yes?”

Pilsane looked disgustedly around the common. “I don’t recall being boarded and ransacked. This place looks like it, though.” Linch underscored the words with a few sympathetically sighing chords. “No wonder Kristi calls us slobs.” Pilsane had to speak loudly to be heard over the sound of the ligret. Over the years they’d all gotten used to talking over the sound of the ligret.

‘Slob’ was a word from Kristi’s native Terran language; an evocative sound that had become part of the crew’s pidgin language. “Very well,” Pyr conceded to Pilsane. “Let Kristi and Vi out of their quarters to perform maintenance—after we’ve set course for Denvry’s base.”

Pilsane grinned, happy to hear that his creature comforts were to be looked after. The easily controlled couple were his personal additions to the
Raptor’s
odd complement. Pilsane had taken to them in much the same way Linch had taken to the dead medic. Their attitudes toward the chattel were almost like children with pets. Better than thinking of them as friends, Pyr cautioned himself. Then, it was a nasty life he led, wasn’t it? Nastier still, if he let himself think of any but his own kind as people.

Pyr sat down at the computer console. After he’d been there for a few minutes, Pilsane came to look over his shoulder. Linch played quietly on while Mik finished his meal. Pyr’s hand ached as he called up data, rearranged datacubes, and tried again. Screens full of information flashed by.

Calrod
. Pilsane’s thought matched the encrypted word.

“I thought this was my private code,” Pyr complained when the probable location of Denvry’s base showed on the screen.

“Got bored and broke it a couple days ago.” Pilsane patted Pyr on the shoulder. “You’re getting better, Captain.”

“Thank you.” Pilsane had the instincts of a datarat, and a smirk Pyr didn’t have to look at to know was there. There was no keeping secrets on board the
Raptor
. Not that they didn’t all try. “I’ll attempt to make my code tougher to crack next time.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

All the research in Pyr’s database indicated that Denvry was on Calrod. Denvry, and four ships, and maybe eighty people. The odds were not unreasonable, but it was further into Bucon territory than Pyr had ventured until now. Hard to keep control of the border when he wasn’t there.

Pyr shut down the station and turned to face the room. Pilsane took a few steps back as he swiveled the chair. Linch lifted his gaze from the ligret strings. When he had their attention, Pyr finally addressed the questions Pilsane had brought up earlier. “We’ll need minimum stations manned. How’s the Rust supply?”

“Approximately twenty days’ worth,” Linch answered. “Who of the crew do we trust?” Linch stated the heart of the matter. “And what do we offer them? Besides Rust. They’re greedy bastards.” He ran his fingers absently up and down scales as he spoke.

After some discussion, they agreed on three crewmembers who were vital, and still trustworthy enough to return to duty. That left forty more plague survivors locked up with their habits in the chattel hold.

“Crew’s getting restless,” Pilsane warned. “Kith’s goading them to remember they’re pirates. It’s not just Rust they want. It’s going to get ugly.”

“Mutinies are boring,” Pyr said. “They stay locked up. Let Kith know I’ll consider using crew for raiding Denvry’s base.”

Linch set the ligret aside. The pilot suddenly had the appearance of a thin, sharp blade; a weapon that could be depended on. Pyr smiled affectionately, comfortable for the moment with the ties and trust of years, though he barely let the expression reach his face. It got him a thought-sent flicker of amusement from Linch anyway.

“Let’s go haul out the chosen few,” Linch said to Pilsane and Mik.

“Look after that hand,” Pilsane reminded Pyr before he exited.

After they were gone Pyr let himself have a moment to slump wearily in the chair. He scrubbed his right hand across his face and through the bangs covering his forehead. Demons, it hurt! He would go to the dispensary all right, to look for painkillers. When he left the common he pretended he felt as brisk and efficient as he tried to look. He told himself this was good practice for the masquerade he was going to have to live as long as he could before his ever-watchful officers caught on. The smile that came to his lips when he entered the dispensary was genuine, as he realized he’d take a certain perverse pleasure in fooling them as long as possible. It was too bad Axylel wasn’t here to wager with him on their reactions.

The nebula that filled the flat viewscreens on the briefing room bulkheads was not officially designated as the Rose, though everyone called it that anyway. Dr. Roxanne Merkrates thought it was a very pretty picture, but gave only a passing glance to the dozen different views on display as she took her seat at the room’s long central table for the weekly briefing. She didn’t suppose the pictures were up there for decor, despite the impeccable aesthetic sense of the
Tigris’s
captain. He looked good framed by the glowing outline of the nebula as he took his seat at the head of the table. But then, Eamon Merkrates’ angular patrician features, tilted jade-green eyes, and faintly green-tinted platinum hair always looked good, as he knew so well.

Even though they’d argued part of the night away, he looked as fresh as though he’d slept with a clean conscience. Maybe he had. She had been working in the lab. After all, she had to do
something
, and if he wouldn’t—

She focused her gaze on the holoprojection of the galaxy hovering colorfully above the center of the table. The map showed the current shapes and borders and overlapping territories of the known interstellar powers. There was the gold that marked the outline of the hundreds of worlds of the United Systems and the silver of the Bucon Empire. There was a tiny slice of rose pink for the guessed influence of the worlds beyond the Rose Nebula, the leprous, shrunken, ragged red blot that showed the estimated area currently under Trin domination, and the blue blobs and dots that showed suspected Pirate League influence. The Powers That Be didn’t take up all that much space on the sparkling pinwheel shape of the map. She was used to seeing this map at every meeting, and usually only paid attention to the shape of the red space. The focus for the people aboard the Tigris was helping that red spot grow smaller and smaller, until it disappeared. Today, the familiar starfield reminded Roxy of sparks flung up from a bonfire by huge storm surge of wind. She couldn’t help but think of those sparks raining back down as the dead ashes of worlds.

The fanciful image chilled her, and she cleared her emotions and carefully kept her expression innocent of anything but alert respect as the Captain’s gaze took in his senior officers. Eamon was all business all the time, and tended to come down hard on her when she behaved with less than his estimation of professional while on duty. He didn’t cut her any slack for her lack of Academy training, being koltiri, or the fact that she was his wife. And he was right, of course. Only—

“Are you with us, Physician?”

The Captain’s voice cut into her like a laser scalpel. When had that authoritative tone become irritating rather than reassuring? “Yes, sir,” she answered, though she couldn’t help but wonder how she’d given any indication that her attention was far from being at another damned boring meeting. She hadn’t yawned, had she?

“Just checking.” His glance cut to his second in command. “Go ahead, Commander Weaver.”

Roxy folded her hands together in her lap, kept her gaze on the databoard she’d brought with her instead of the holomap, and simply tried to listen until her turn came. Maybe he wouldn’t call on her, as he already knew he wasn’t going to like her making either her information, or her position, public.

On one side of her sat the silver-furred Felinid security chief, all slim and sleek and dangerous, making even the dull black of the MilService uniform look good. On the other was big, burly, hairy Bear O’Hare—whose daddy had been Ursid and whose Terran momma had been careful. There were a lot of mixed matings in the United Systems, with its nearly eight-hundred-year history and huge population of worlds peopled by the diversity of humanoid life-forms engendered by the Neshama Seedings. She was a product of one mixed mating, when a koltiri had been bonded to a Terran. She knew she and Eamon were another mixed mating, even though the people born on his homeworld rejected the very idea of the Neshama.

“Beyond the Rose,” Commander Maura Weaver’s words drew Roxy’s attention only because that was the title of a song her sister had written, “is unknown territory.”

That one too, “Unknown Territory.” What was this, a staff meeting or a retrospective of Reine Shirah’s greatest hits? Roxy did not crack a smile with the thought, but several people around her did. Such was the curse of being an empath in a good mood; it was catching.

The captain didn’t notice. His attention was on his first officer as she continued. “Long-range scout drones have shown a massive build up of Borderer ships on their—uh, border.” There was faint laughter around the table. “It would be nice if we actually knew what the isolationists call themselves,” Maura added after the room was quiet again. “It would help to not only know who they are, but what they’re doing.”

“Intelligence hasn’t been able to provide any more than the drone data,” Captain Merkrates told his officers. “But the Coordinated Services’ Council has made the decision to put all long-range patrol vessels on alert.”

“Us,” Bear O’Hare summed up Eamon’s official statement. “We’re on our way to the Rose.” There was a certain eagerness in Bear’s tone. Roxy understood. There were fewer combat assignments to go around lately, and the adrenaline rush of danger tended to be addicting.

Roxy glanced at the pretty pink and red projection of the Rose Nebula on the wall screens. “It’s their border,” she found herself saying, though the ship’s Medical Officer had no business expressing anything but medical opinions in a briefing. “As long as there’re no Trin involved, if they want to park their whole fleet on their side of it, it’s none of our business. It would be nice if they’d talk to us,” she went on, as all eyes looked her way. “We don’t know what they look like or what they call themselves after fifty years of trying to get their attention. Why not send another ambassadorial mission instead of combat vessels? Haven’t we got more important things to do than worry about some paranoid non-aligned aliens?” She knew she’d said too much. A good officer followed orders without questioning them and didn’t offer opinions without being asked. She wasn’t a very good officer.

“I know, I know,” she added before some other senior officer could point her faults out to her. “Stick to your job, Physician. Ours is not to reason why and this is a briefing room not the mess hall.” She slouched down in her chair; not an easy position for such a tall woman to assume in a plasform chair that did its best to be comfortable at all times. She had to kick its control leg to get it to let her slump.

Eamon had steepled his fingers on the simulated wood tabletop, but was not feeling particularly annoyed as he gazed her way. He was feeling indulgent, which was ever so much more annoying to her—and he knew it. “Thank you for issuing your own reprimand, Roxy.”