Hellflower (v1.1) (16 page)

The list of those who could do so is very short, and very near the Throne.

And very dangerous for Butterfly.

So someone wanted Tiggy dead. I got that reet. And by any set of numbers, Alaric Dragonfiame was bent. Fine.

But that meant there wasn’t any place on Kiffit I could leave Tiggy. I went back inside
Firecat
and got dressed. Tiggy looked a little better, but the hold was a mess and I had to dog the supplies down before I lifted. I threw a pile of bloody rags into the disposal and got out the dogging webs. Stow the supplies. Get clearance. Go.

I was weary to the bone; ripe and stupid for the having. A Fenshee fancy-boy could have iced me bare-handed, and my reflexes and judgment was coked beyond use. I had food and water and air enough to take me and Tiggy 25 days’ worth of anywhere, and that was halfway to the Core. Only there still wasn’t any place off Kiffit I could take Tiggy. Coldwater was out; my nighttime man was there. He wouldn’t like me dragging half the Court to his doorstep, and his displeasure tends to I)c fatal. Royal was out; it was too dangerous to get to and the Pledge had probably already left there. Maybe Tiggy knew where she’d gone, but that wouldn’t help me if she’d gone too far Core-ward.

I needed allies, and someplace to run, and there was noplace and nobody I could afford to trust. Not with Paladin to protect; too. Nobody would hide a Librarian and a Library.

Run with
Firecat
, and lead the werewolves to Tiggy. Lose
Firecat
, and Paladin was dead.

"Need one scenario with true-tell, Pally, not two. Hellflowers for me or Tiggy?"

"If there were one explanation that explained everything, Butterfly, do you sincerely believe I would refrain from sharing it with you?"

"What?" My tongue felt boiled.

"Go to sleep, Butterfly. I’ll wake you when
Firecat
has clearance." And my teeth still itched, dammit.

###

About a thousand years later I finally got hungry enough to wake up.

I felt like I was made out of solar sails; light and huge and ready to collapse at an unkind touch. I blundered around until I found water, and drank till my head was clear.

It was dark in
Firecat
.

"Hatch." Paladin opened it. It was dark outside.

But it was dark when I went to sleep. "Lights," I said. "Hatch." The hold lights went up and
Firecat
folded herself back together again.

Tiggy was twitching in his sleep like he’d like to toss and turn and didn’t have the energy. I’d put a feederpak on him last night. It was empty and the field kit only had one more. I hooked it up and hit my biopak doing it. My wrist rang like a bell, but there was no painease left. "Hatch," I said again, and this time went out through it.

From the sky I’d slept at least a day. It was horizon-rise; the sky was red as what I’d been covered in last night. The watchlights was on and not doing much for anybody.

Firecat
was still hooked up to Kiffit-Port Systems. There wasn’t any blood around that I could see.

"Give."

"Dominich Fenrir has placed a hold order on
Firecat
."

I leaned against
Firecat’s
hull and thought about it for a while. Paladin isn’t dumb. If there was anything more urgent-like the Teasers coming for us-he’d of given it to me first.

"Is there some reason I should know," I said carefully, "why you didn’t just reverse it?"

"I do not know when the hold was placed on
Firecat
," Paladin started, taking the scenic route through his explanation. "It did not appear during any of my status or station-keeping checks. As for why I did not reverse it clandestinely," dramatic pause, "the traffic computer won’t allow me to.
Firecat’s
file contains a notation that this hold order is an ‘eyes-only’ clearance, and will have to be countermanded manually by the verified person of Dominich Fenrir himself."

I shook my head a couple of times, tried to rub my face with the biopak and came fully awake. "Dommie gigged my ship?" But Dommie wanted me to go away. Didn’t he?

"I have activated the landline for Dominich Fenrir’s place of residence, but it does not seem to be inhabited at this time. Neither has he been to his office today. Therefore I thought it best to let you sleep. I have impersonated you and queried Departure Control through normal channels; they would appreciate it if you would meet with Fenrir before you leave. Should I have taken off anyway?" Paladin knew the answer to that well as I did.

I made sure everything was topped up and started uncoupling
Firecat’s
hookups one-handed.

"There’s more."

I dropped the waste hose on the crete and scared myself with the sound. "Tell." I still wasn’t quite awake; I needed more sleep than I’d got and my nerves were jumpy. Mercs got a safe base to go to while the battledrugs wore off; I didn’t.

"The rokeach has been counter-offered for at Market Garden list. Accept?"

It took me moment to remember my so-called purpose in life. "Sure." I resisted the impulse to give the rokeach away free, just to devalue Fenrir’s purloined compkey more. "More?"

"There is an offer of employment for us listed at the Guildhall."

"Sure there is." Pally was a barrel of laughs this evening.

"It lists our class and registry number as provided to the trade board at the Guildhall. There is no doubt that this ship and its captain-owner is meant."

"Ignore it. When I get hands on Dommie—"

"Butterfly, the offer of employment is from Lalage Rimini."

Just what I wanted to complete my collection of trouble. A chance to mix it up with Silver Dagger. I finished unhooking
Firecat
and went back inside.

###

But first a word from our sponsor, or, why the plucky Gentrymort didn’t just bust chops at Kiffit-Port, blast wayaway into the up-an-out and ignore all hold orders. Kiffit’s the Outfar, after all. No tractors, no pressors, no stasis fields. Not even a force screen over the port.

But this is Real Life.

Your basic talkingbook freebooter blasts off in defiance of all the Imperial and local regs from every port he lands at with the wicked-wickeds in hot pursuit, changes two numbers on his registry and proceeds to his next downfall, sweet and anonymous. No one bothers him. No one notices his ship, a completely unique design painted with the jeweled likeness of the Goddess of Justice, which is wanted from here to the Outfar and back to the Core with more Class-A warrants than Destiny’s Five-Cornered Dog, and when Hero-che-bai is done with his adventure, the Higher Powers square the rap on his cheat-sheet and he goes his way with a pristine First Ticket and the galaxy open before him. Nuts.

Fact of life number one: all Imperial Ports are the property of the Imperium. The Pax Imperador does not stop at the edge of the atmosphere. Imperial Ports have a pretty good information-matching system that is one so-called bennie of the Empire. In other words, you may run but you can’t hide. Not anywhere Imperial Ports is sold.

Fact of life number two: breaking Imperial Port regs leads to automatic disbarment from use of the Imperial Port facilities till the end of time or six months longer, and the Empire owns all the ports there are, except Free Ports. You lose your First Ticket, period.

Fact of life number three: any ship looking like the ship they was looking for would be looked at real close for the next whiles after anybody jumped Impie-Port like that. The Imps wouldn’t go by the registry number, either. They got some brains. They’d check class-tonnage-dockage-stowage-rating etcetera and so forth: match the stats and search the ship.

Even with a pristine-mint registry of Pally’s rare device, I didn’t want to chance attention like that. There’s a difference between trouble-but-worth-it and trouble, period.

Fact of life number four: the only interest the Higher Powers had in dicty-barb me was to give me a new career as an official dead person, and even the undying gratitude of every hellflower ever born wouldn’t be enough to change that.

###

"Silver Dagger wants me to do bidness?" I repeated.

This would’ve made more sense if Silver Dagger didn’t want my entrails for garters over a troubleship pitch I pulled for her ten years back. Rimini brokered it, me and Pally queered it. She never did forgive me for being a better pilot than she wanted.

"The request was posted just after the rokeach was placed on offer, Butterfly. Hard copy of the request was posted to
Firecat
. I was too busy to check before now."

"Legit aboveboard offers of employment through Guildhall being rare in our line of work," I finished.

I let
Firecat
take more of my weight and thought hard, like you do about something as complicated as a three-legged tik in and out of half-a-dozen different sets of local regulations figuring air and power and cargo to make a profit overall.

I was real deep in something, I didn’t know what, and I didn’t have the down-deep belief any more in the good numbers that would let me walk away alive.

My edge was gone.

I’d seen people break before. I’d always thought it was something you could help, not like something being gone. But just like I knew I didn’t have six toes on my left foot, I knew I didn’t have the good numbers anymore.

It wasn’t that I was broke and hurting. I’d been that before. And not knowing the play the oppo was farcing was no news either.

But trying to keep Tiggy alive was going to kill me. I knew that as sure as I knew my luck was gone, and explaining that to Paladin would haul as much cubic as explaining to goforths why they ought to work when they’re broke.

But if I died, what happened to Paladin?

"File Rimini under ‘amusing but trouble,’ bai. T’hell with her, anyway. I’m going to go see Fenrir."

There was also the matter that what Paladin’d figured out about Dragonflame Tiggy might too, even without a City Directory built into his brain. I knew damn well what that’d lead to, and Paladin didn’t have hands to keep him here with. I went back inside
Firecat
.

Tiggy was looking pretty good for someone who’d been part dead ihe night before. I looked round and found his knife, and sealed it up in one of
Firecat’s
bulkheads where he wasn’t never going to find it with out me. That should keep him put if he woke up. If I came back I could give it to him. If I didn’t, we was all dead.

I opened my hotlocker to dress. Blasters and a vibro and a throwing-spike down the neck-the biopak on my right wrist meant no hide-out strapped there, so I put another throwing-spike on the left wrist, just for grins. Jacket to hide the silhouette of all that heat, and a few surprises added, just in case. I could stop on the way out and order more supplies. With painease to damp my wrist down to a dull roar, I could finish stowing everything.

"Butterfly, all you are going to do is speak with Fenrir about the hold order?" Paladin sounded downright suspicious. "You will not attempt to murder Alaric Dragonflame, or provoke Silver Dagger, or—"

"Trust me," I said out loud, and that it didn’t matter if Tiggy heard. Was going to have to make him trust me too, poor bai.

"Why is it that I do not, Butterfly?" Paladin asked, for my ears only. I didn’t answer that. There was a time he’d of been right, too, but it was sometime last night when I still thought I was going to live forever.

###

I hooked
Firecat
up to the landlines again for data access before I went. The port shops fixed me up with semi-licit feederpaks and clothes for Tiggy, and I even got the drugs-they said "generic" on the seal, all legal, but it was pasted right over the Imperial Phoenix. I put the stuff by to pick up later and headed on over to the beautiful downside Port Authority Building.

There was maybe four-five sophonts in place; the songbird and his alternate watching the traffic computer, the Portmaster and an interchangeable Peacekeeper. No TC&C officer. Dommie-che-bai Fenrir wasn’t in.

None of the people there knew where Dommie was, and none of them wanted to know, and nobody, plain to see, was going to interfere in Dommie’s little games. This left me at a minor what you may call your basic disadvantage.

If I didn’t get off Kiffit I was dead Real Soon Now.

If I blew Dommie’s hold order to get off Kiffit, the only way I could run was deeper into the never-never, away from the
Pledge Of Honor
.

If I tried that with Tiggy on board, he’d kill me.

###

The Elephant and Starcastle was right where I left it-a nice touch of continuity in an uncertain Empire. I took a booth in the back and ordered all kinds of finest-kind glycogen-replacement munchies, it hav ing been at least an hour since breakfast. While I ate, I tried to make everything make sense, from the cargo of dud song-ice to the missing Teaser. It wouldn’t.

The house gambler at Starcastle is a Moggie hight Varra-x meters of black fur and bad temper and copper eyes like red murder. She had too many fingers and thumbs in the wrong places, but I never hold something like that against a sophont.

She sat down at my table. The fur made it hard to see how she was put together, but I already knew how she was in a fight.

"Give a girl a game, stardancer?" she asked, shuffling the kingsticks. I stacked credit on the table and she spilled out the sticks in the first pattern.

"Make management nervous, sitting here so quiet. Here is quiet, peaceful, yes?"

I took the sticks away from her and hoped my throw’d beat Fire In The Lake. Varra looked at the biopak on my arm as I tossed and her ears fanned out.

"Yo, che-bai," I said, "looking to be history, oncet square with Teaser. Fenrir gone missing, true-tell?" I threw Glass Castle and Varra took some of my credit off the top of the pile.

"Know you I, girly-girl-my. Why not runalong homeaways? Nothing to find here." This might mean something and it might not, but the Starcastle wanting to roust me was not happy-making.