Hellflower (v1.1) (27 page)

"You will be careful, won’t you, Butterfly. You understand that you are in an extremely vulnerable position at present. I do not wish anything ‘fun’ to happen to you." Paladin sounded disapproving.

"I be good, Pally. Promise. You be careful."

"Against what horrendous peril, Butterfly, should I be taking care?" Paladin said, but he wasn’t cross. Then there wasn’t nothing more to say. So I left.

Neither one of us remembered then about the scanning-echo he’d heard earlier.

I looked forward to flying Lightfoot’s
Lady
without Paladin about as much as he liked life without external sensors. I woke up the main board, fed power to the para-grav systems, and cased back on the throttles with my right hand while I goosed the lifters with my left. All the telltales read either too high or too low with a sweet unanimity of feeling so lacking in the modern galaxy. Nothing wrong with
Light Lad y
that a kilo-year of maintenance wouldn’t fix. I just hoped she’d make it out of atmosphere.

I had to use more power than I liked to make the hull plating snap down, and
Lady
resented it. After a whole bunch more of shuddering she raised, and I said another prayer to the Maker-of-Starships not to let this one go splat.

MhonePort didn’t twig to the fact that I’d just come from downside (me not being born yesterday) or the fact that
Silverdagger Legacy
(Paladin’s choice of name and I didn’t much care for it but he’d refused to change it) was the same
Light Lady
that gave them so much grief earlier. Some kiddy from the Portmaster’s office met me personally at the docking slip, meaning things already was starting for to jump salty in Archangel’s immanence. I showed him my First Ticket and the fax of the ownership for
Legacy
and a bunch of other nonsense including all kinds of papers about my hellflower supercargo that used to belong to Errol and be about somebody else. The prancer’s brat and me discussed heading out with a crane-crew to pick up
Firecat
and put her in the rack at the Port for my disposal. All on the up and up.

Then he went off and I went and looked in at Tiggy, who was still at his own private angeltown. I went back out and was wondering if I should close up
Lady
and take the crane out now or wait a while more for Parxifal’s kiddies when this unfamiliar slimy-looking little coward sidled up to me.

"You Butterfly St. Cyr?" he demanded in a breathy whisper. He was covered in genuine lizardskin and I’d never seen him before. "Captain-Owner St. Cyr, of the
Legacy.
Whaddya want?" I didn’t like him already and I’d never seen him before. Maybe it was his taste in shirts.

"Olione sent me for your cargo," he said, and started up the rump. This is nine kinds of bad form to a Gentry-legger and I body-blocked him and walked him back a few steps. I wondered where Parxifal’d picked up this one. "Wait right here and don’t move. You move, I blow you wayaway," I told him. I waved my blaster to punctuate this and went inside
Lady
to punch up Parxifal’s landline code on
Lady’s
airlock commo. Olione answered.

"St. Cyr. Is small ugly person here says he’s from you for kick. True-tell?"

"His name?" Olione was death on positive ID.

I leaned out the hatch. "Your name, small, ugly, and alive-for-the-moment person?"

"Loritch."

"Loritch."

"He’s all right," said Olione. This was lousy security but his business. Olione started to say more, but I cut the line on him, having places to go and people to be.

"Oke," I told Loritch, coming back down ramp. "Kick’s in hold and I got ticket-of-leave. You dance it yourself. Now’s a good time." Brother Loritch gave me look that promised wonders and came back real quick with two goons and a aerosledge. I handed Loritch the provenance so’s he could cross-check it and endorse it and went down to open the holds and make sure Errol’s cargo was treated with proper respect.

Loritch followed me down. He didn’t kick about the damaged chobosh, which struck me as funny. The other funny thing was the quaint inability of the dock-muscle to distinguish a bunch of little gray boxes of chobosh with non-countersigned Korybant "For Export" seals from the piles of junk in the hold. They loaded plenty of both, including that slab of Old Fed Library, and the aerosledge had such a lovely false bottom you almost couldn’t see.

So Errol had been smuggling Chapter 5 illegals, and using the chobosh as his dummy cargo. It made sense. You could buy your way out of smuggling chobosh, and any Teaser that caught you with a hold full of that wouldn’t look much farther.

And since I had Lightfoot’s
Lady
, now I was smuggling Chapter 5s. I tried to work up an interest in wondering if that was what Rimini’d had in mind and gave it up as too much effort.

Then A-sled and chobosh and muscle and the Old Fed Tech went back down the ramp and Loritch prepared to follow. I grabbed him by a collar that looked lurid enough to bite back.

"Forgetting something?"

Loritch played stupid. "Provenance," I prompted. "Endorsed. Without ticket-of-leave I don’t get paid." It was probably stupid, but cranes and cradles and cubic cost money.

"Receipt’s with cargo. You-"

And my life depended on acting natural. So I Spun Loritch round, dug both fists into his godawful tunic and hauled him up to my eye level. I braced him against the bulkhead and held him there one handed while I eased my vibroblade out of my boot with my free hand. Activated vibro’ll cut anything up to and including bone, and we both knew it.

"Yeah, well, this here’s the Roaq and everybody got problems. My problem is, I want to get paid. Your problem is, you’re forgetful. But don’t you worry about that, che-bai. In absence of the receipt, your head’ll do me real nice."

"No!
Wait!"
Loritch squawked as the vibro started to judder in my hand. "The receipt-I have it right here!"

We made sure the provenance was legal and binding-which counts for more than you might imagine in a universe where the Guild can blacklist employers-and I let go of Loritch and he left.

Now I had either my feoff or a real good basis for litigation. I could discount my ticket-of-leave to someone else if I didn’t want to bother with going to see Parxifal in person, raise valuta with it as collateral, or deposit it for collection in a Guild bank (slow). I’d make up my mind which later, but that could wait. Now I was going to go get paladin, then go to RoaqMheri, then go.

Period.

It was about a hour back to the crash site at the speed the rolligon crane made, which gave me plenty of time to wonder if I’d of cut Loritch and decide I probably wouldn’t. If he was any good he should of been able to see that. The next person probably would see, and then I’d be nonfiction. But darktraders don’t retire, and dictys don’t get honest jobs. Maybe Paladin’d have sonic ideas aside from me becoming a hellflower.

I’d thought the whole matter over careful and decided I wasn’t going to leave him alone in the Roaq, especially if this was home base for a Old Fed illegals scam. I could hide Paladin in
Light Lady-Silverdagger Legacy
-and I would. What could he do to stop me? Scream?

Besides, I wouldn’t tell him. I could fly
Lady
without him. I’d take off from here and we’d hit angels and then it’d be too late for him to creeb. If
Lady
blew up, so he it.

"Jur’zi plaiz, Saranzr?" the rolligon driver said. I looked around. About halfway out the horizon’d cut off the primary and the driver sent up a couple lumes for illumination. The light was white and bright and I could see real good. There was the trench where we’d landed and scorch marks from
Lady’s
cannon and sonic trash from when I’d shifted house. But nothing else. Not anything. No
Firecat.
No Paladin.

I jumped down off the side of the rolligon and looked around. Kicked gravel into one of the holes made by
Lady’s
landing struts. Something glittered. I picked it up. Errol’s blaster.

I looked around again. No tracks where something was took away, but the rolligon wasn’t leaving any either.

No Paladin.

"Where t’hell’s my ship?" Paladin didn’t answer. Paladin wasn’t in range, not without power from
Firecat’s
engines. Paladin was trapped in a dead hulk some sonabitch had stole off the desert and I didn’t know where he was.

"Afta pay forz, don’cha? Namadda? Erg int free, janoo." The downside driver’s patwa was thick enough to slice and ship, but the tune was simple to follow.

"T’hell with crane-rent; I’m golden! Where’s my ship?"

Crane boss regarded me with expression of wary superiority. "Je anyone some pi kitup, jai? Ne p’tout markers, je, Saranzir-jilly-bai?"

"Dammit was not a salvage job was my ship with a current registry and of course I put out markers! She wasn’t even out here since halfpast today!"

"Oke," he said. "Look rounsome, je?"

"Yeah, bo. You do that, just for me."

I spun good credit to hook the crane up to RoaqMhone’s satellite net and the MhonePort main computer banks over on RoaqMheri. Not only wasn’t
Firecat
anywhere on the surface of RoaqMhone, she hadn’t got up and walked back to MhonePort on her own.

And there wasn’t any tickle from my RTS.

Was Paladin already dead? Any tech worth his oxy’d see my navicomp didn’t look like any navicomp built in the last thousand years. The Empire’d put a section on how to recognize Libraries in the front of every maintenance manual ever recorded. Had somebody levered him up out of
Firecat’s
cockpit-well, not keeping care because they meant to kill him, and I stopped thinking about that. I didn’t know. I’d find out, and then I’d kill whoever I had to, and then I’d do whatever was left to do. You don’t sell out your friends. Not ever. And you don’t just walk away from them, neither. Not if there’s hope, and not if there isn’t.

I handed over credit and crane boss took me back to MhonePort. Somebody’d took
Firecat
, whether they knew what they was looking for or not. I’d have to collect my ticket-of-leave, now. I’d be needing credit and lots of it for what I had to do.

###

By time I got back to the
Lady
I managed to convince myself that
Firecat’d
been kyted for scrap plastic. The fact there wasn’t a mob in the streets yelling for the Librarian already was a point in favor of the nobody having found Paladin yet theory. But even if
Firecat’d
been took for some reason not to do with Paladin, it was only a matter of time before they found him. And killed him. I started thinking what favors I could call in, but nothing living would do a favor for a Librarian.

Tiggy came out of
Lady’s
captain’s cabin when I stepped through the hatch. I’d forgot all about Tiggy Stardust out there on the desert, but Tiggy Stardust hadn’t forgot all about me.

"
Kore
San’Cyr. What has happened? I know this is Errol Lightfoot’s ship; the message you left told me to wait, and-" He got a good look at me and stopped.

"Took my ship some sonabitch stole
Firecat
dammit right off desert an-" I was real calm. Sure.

Tiggy came and put his hands on my shoulders and said: "We will slay them."

I took a deep breath. I did not need more trouble, gifted, rented, or bought. "If I knew who kyted my goforth, you brainburn barbarian, I’d frag him myself."

"
Kore
San’Cyr, you must know." Tiggy was being patient. I hated patient psychopaths. I had to get rid of him too. What I was about to do he couldn’t be any part of.

"Look, bai, I been thinking. Have run your rig all wrong. Should of done better with you from git-go. You should ought to go off somewhere an— Look, Archangel he be here bye-m-bye seventeen hours. All you glitterborn know each other. Why don’t you go off and get ID’d by him an-"

"And be dead by nightfall,
Kore
? Archangel is no friend to the Gentle People. If, as you say, House Dragonflame has sought my life, be sure that Archangel covers them with his shadow. I had rather die ignobly without walls than give myself as a pawn into the hands of my father’s great enemy."

"Then go fax your da, check into outhostel, join Azarine-I don’t care. Just git! Can’t stay here. It ain’t safe and I don’t want you. I got things to do-" I got to go die with my Library, Tiggy-bai, like I always knew I would. . . .

"
Kore
, I have sworn not to leave you until you have returned me to my father. I cannot leave you. I thought you understood that by now," said Tiggy.

"I don’t give a good goddamn about your honor, ‘flower. What I be doing here you’d turn up your dainty glitterborn nose at and that’s no good to me." Fifteen hours-twelve, now-and Paladin and me had to be out of here. Only I didn’t know where Paladin was.

"You only say such things when you are afraid," said Tiggy, putting an arm around me, and it was such a weird thing to hear from him that I stopped juggling maybes and stared. He smiled, all white teeth-a real one.

"You are afraid enough to forget that you are afraid of ‘honor-mad barbarians.’ You have watched me, and forget that I also watch you,
alarthme.
I have learned how you think. It was the ship itself that you were protecting when the
chaudatu
Silver Dagger forced you to come here. You could not let the
Firecat
be touched by the honorless Imperial barbarians. Now we will find it. Your honor will be mine, and our vengeance will be monstrous. But you must tell me where to look."

A secret’s a secret while nobody looks; Paladin always said that. Paladin’s only a secret, really, while nobody wonders about me and what I do. I’d told Tiggy too much, and he’d put most of it together. Soon he’d have the rest-well, that was simple enough. Kill anybody who came close. That was the rules. I’d broke them, and this was the payoff.

I could save Tiggy just maybe, if WC got out of here with
Light Lady
Now.