Korval's Game (55 page)

And that
, Priscilla thought with an inward sigh,
was that.
She knew better than to try to talk any Liaden out of an action that had been found, by some fey balancing of duty, desire, and melant’i, to be “necessary.”

“May I ask you a thing,” Nova said suddenly, “as captain of this vessel?”

What now
? Priscilla wondered, but kept her face and voice serene. “Yes.”

“I wonder how you came to name a clanless first mate?”

“Ah.” Priscilla leaned back and sipped her own wine, her eyes drawn upward, to the glittery frivolous mobile Anthora yos’Galan had given her brother Shan. “Ren Zel is able; mere hours away from master pilot. He is respected by his shipmates, and—” She brought her eyes down to meet Nova’s gaze. “And, he is not . . . entirely . . . clanless. This ship—this crew—are his kin. He will fight to keep both safe, with his last gasp of life.”

Nova sat for a moment, then inclined her head. “It is well-reasoned. I thank you.” She stood, leaving her empty glass on the corner of Priscilla’s desk. “If I may have the use of a comm?”

Priscilla rose. “You may use this one, and welcome,” she said. “I am wanted on the bridge.”

“Thank you. Sister.” She smiled, then, sudden and genuine. “I am glad to be able to say it.”

LIAD
Department of Interior
Command Headquarters

THE BOX WAS
approximately five foot square, matte black and, on casual inspection, seamless.

Commander of Agents, completing an inspection that was not at all casual, paused before the door and looked to the hovering technician.

“I would examine the interior.”

“Certainly, Commander.” The tech removed a cylinder no longer than his forefinger from a pocket and depressed a section of its black surface. There was no sound, but when Commander of Agents again faced the box, it was to discover that one wall had slid away. The interior was very dark. Commander of Agents produced a hand light from his pocket, flicked it on and stepped into the box.

Its interior dimension was somewhat less than the outside led one to expect; the ceiling short enough that Commander of Agents needed to duck his head and round his shoulders. A taller person would not have been able to stand at all, but would need to kneel upon the ungiving metal floor.

“The apparatus,” the technician murmured from the doorway, “is enclosed in the floor and the sidewalls. If one braces oneself against a wall, or kneels or lies down on the floor—the lethargic affect is far greater. The test subject has been able to experience the weakening of his abilities, which was not expected, but which may prove useful. In the short term, the perceptible ebb of power has been observed to awaken panic to the verge of hysteria in the test subject.”

Commander of Agents played his light around the interior of the box, noting with satisfaction the smooth, nearly featureless metal walls. There were a series of small vents—33 holes altogether, the report had said—on the immovable wall. These were for ventilation, or for the introduction of gasses, as necessary. On the very center of the “ceiling” were several indentations—these the microphone and speakers for communicating with the inmate, or for introducing sounds as might be required. An uncomfortable place, altogether, in the normal way of things, but for those of the dramliz—a torture.

“You lost a subject, I believe?” he said over his shoulder to the technician.

“Commander, we did. The first dramliza understood her circumstance very quickly and was able to raise sufficient power to hurl a fireball at the apparatus beneath the floor.”

The Commander’s little beam of light danced across the floor, found a black smear rather like a grease stain on the floor nearly at his feet; a similar stain ran half-way down the wall he faced.

“Did the mechanism take harm?”

“Tests immediately after the incident indicated that the apparatus remained fully functional,” the technician said. “The material, you see, is highly reflective of that energy utilized by the dramliz. The bolt was thus sent back to the subject from the floor and all the walls, immolating her. An unfortunate loss of an interesting subject. I very much regret the waste.”

“There is some waste in all experiments. You have found the second subject less volatile, I understand.”

“It was understood that proper testing required that we utilize dramliza of greater rather than lesser ability, and the present subject, like the first, is very strong. He is, however, young; and we hold his cha’leket hostage to his cooperation. Also, I took care to show him the stains you have found, sir, and explain in depth how they came to be there.” The technician paused. “There was, of course, some danger that he would attempt to suicide, using this proven means, but he is, as I have said, young, fond of his cha’leket, and inclined to believe in the possibility of rescue.”

Hunched, the Commander backed out of the box and flicked off his light. Straightening his cramped shoulders, he looked again to the technician.

“You planted the belief that he might expect a rescue?”

The tech inclined his head. “It seemed the best strategy, given the need to conceal our development from the dramliz.”

The Commander took a moment to consider this. Ordinarily, he did not tolerate such innovations from mere technicians. In this case, however, given, as had been said, the need to conserve resources . . . He inclined his head.

“You have done well,” he said. The technician bowed profoundly. “I will wish to speak with the subject in”—he glanced as his chronometer—“four hours, Standard. I suggest he spend the time before our meeting in there.” He flicked a negligent hand at the box.

The tech bowed again.

“Commander, it shall be done.”

LYTAXIN:
Mercenary Encampment

CLONAK WAS ON
the camp, engaging in poker with as disreputable a half-dozen card sharps as Daav had been privileged to behold in at least twenty years. He hoped, though without much optimism, that Clonak would allow them to retain their dignity, if not their pay.

Shadia, sensible woman that she was, had retired immediately after their release from Commander Carmody’s dinner party.

Nelirikk—or Beautiful, as Commander Carmody had it—had chosen to remain with the fearsome duo he referred to, with no irony that Daav could detect, as “the recruits”. The Rifle—one Diglon—appeared of a phlegmatic nature and would very likely follow Shadia’s sensible schedule. However, the winsome and biddable Hazenthull had been another kindle of kittens entirely. She had been most displeased to find that she was not to be allowed to sit sentinel by the autodoc enclosing—and gods have mercy, healing—her senior, and had only reluctantly accompanied Nelirikk and Diglon to quarters.

Which left Daav, wide awake and content to be alone, sitting cross-legged on the bench by the ’doc containing the wounded explorer, eyes closed against the darkness.

It was at times like this that he could feel her sitting next to him, her knee companionably pressing his; her silence sanctifying his disinclination to talk. Aelliana, his lifemate. Dead these last twenty-five Standard years.

Daav sighed in the dark, and felt Aelliana lay her hand, comfortingly, on his thigh.

It came to him that he was as much a ghost as she: his brother was dead, and his brother’s lifemate. Who of Clan Korval would remember Daav yos’Phelium, so long absent from kin and hearth? Certainly not the so-formidable son referred to, by explorer and mercenary commander alike, as “the scout”—as if there were only one in all the galaxy. The small boy he had given, weeping, into the care of his cha’leket had in some way become a man revered as a lesser god by the Yxtrang soldier he had bested in single combat; lifemate of a red-haired rakehell no less beloved of Jason Carmody.

“What may we bring to these feral children, our kin?” he murmured into the darkness.

“Why a working Rifle,” Aelliana answered, her voice warm inside the whorlings of his ears, “and a brace of explorers. It seems a gift they will know how to value.”

Daav smiled and resisted the temptation to pat the hand that could not be touching him. “Why, so it does. And how fortuitous to have met them upon the road, to be sure.”

Aelliana laughed softly and it was all he could do, not to open his eyes and turn to look at her. Instead, he smiled for her, and sighed, just a little.

“Commander Carmody has promised to send a message to our son’s lady, desiring her to visit at her earliest convenience,” he said. “Perhaps we may meet her soon.”

“Will she accept the Yxtrang, do you think?” asked Aelliana.

Daav sighed again. “Commander Carmody thinks it. . . . possible. And we see that she has allowed our son to persuade her to one Yxtrang already . . .”

“Singularly persuasive, this scout of yours,” she teased him.

“You will hardly blame him whole cloth upon me,” he said, with mock severity. “Not only did I find you an enthusiastic participant during construction, but saw you thoroughly besotted with the result.”

“You, of course, never named him ‘Little Dragon’, nor recited nonsense verses for hours on end to lull him to sleep.”

“A man of my honors and position? I should think not.”

“False, oh false, van’chela! A man of your dignity, indeed.”

“Oh, and now I have no dignity?” He forgot himself and spoke aloud, rousing the tech on duty.

“Everything OK over there?” she called.

“Yes—” Daav began, opening his eyes, and then came to his feet, staring at the ’doc, which ought to be—which had been—aglow with readouts, and status lights.

“Something’s wrong,” he called to the tech.

She ran to his side, took one look at the somber ’doc and shook her head with a sigh.

“Nothing wrong,” she said. “He’s just dead, is all.”

Things that Go Bump
in the Night

THE HOUSE LAY
shrouded in pre-dawn, its rooms at rest. Abovestairs, a woman slept uneasily in a bed beneath a silvering skylight, her hair a dark wing across the pillows. A gray cat, his pre-dawn nap disrupted by the lady’s restive habit, sat at the foot of the bed, meticulously washing his whiskers.

“Necessity,” the woman said clearly, her voice full of unshed tears. The cat paused in his ablutions, paw poised by cheek, ears ticked forward, as if reserving judgment on the truth of her assertion until he had heard the whole.

“Necessity, captain,” Anthora yos’Galan moaned, twisting beneath the knotted blankets. She gasped and abruptly sat up, silver eyes wide, staring toward the cat, but seeing something entirely else.

“Yxtrang,” she gasped. “Suicide craft. Gods, oh gods—the
Passage
. . .” She blinked, eyes focusing at last on the cat, who met her gaze, looked away, and completed the suspended pass at his whiskers.

Anthora threw back the blankets and swung to the floor, the ribbons of her bed shirt fluttering with the speed of her movements. Barefoot, she went across the room, snatched up a white silk robe and shrugged it on, knotting the sash as she moved.

“Lord Merlin,” she called as she passed from the room.

The cat shook out his paw, jumped to the floor and followed.

***

HE HAD BARELY
closed his eyes when the battle-dream formed, horrific as ever, shaking him out of slumber, as it did every third or fourth sleep shift. Lina, the ship’s Healer, assured him that the memory would fade in time and leave him in peace. Until that time, however, Ren Zel was left to devise his own strategies for outwitting the demon and gaining his rest.

With the room lights cycled to their brightest, he pulled a bound book of Terran poetry from the cache next to his bed.

The volume was a collection of lyrical poetry on the theme of sensual delight; a gift from one Selain Gudder, with whom he had enjoyed a liaison of pleasure three trade trips back. He smiled with remembered fondness and, opening the book at random, soon lost himself in the rich, evocative language.

Eventually, lulled by images at once alien and comfortable, he caught himself nodding and waved a hand to extinguish the light.

He fell immediately into sleep. At once his sleeve was snatched by—well, he was not precisely certain who, save that the touch and the voice seemed—familiar—and whose evident distress had root in the same horrific incident which haunted his own sleep.

“Peace, peace,” he soothed her, for she was crew—she must be crew, mustn’t she, who had such a memory upon her? It was no less than his duty as first mate to ease her.

“Peace,” he said a third time, as she thrust the dream forward, shrilling a warning of disaster to come.

That brought him up for a moment, then he saw that she must be caught yet in the throes of the thing, where past and present were as one.

“We are beyond it,” he told her, in the mode of Comrade. “We are safe. The battle is over. The war is ending. All is well.” He extended a hand and touched her shoulder, lightly, as a comrade might. “Sleep now; you have no cause for worry.” And with gentle firmness, he pushed her away.

He half-woke, then, sighed, and subsided into dreamlessness, the book slipping from his fingers to the floor. A few hours later, he drifted toward wakefulness once more, roused enough to feel the cat kneading his chest. Drowsily, he raised a hand and stroked the creature, feeling the plush fur warm against his palm, and the vibration of a purr—his eyes sprang open in shock.

“
Cat
?”

The room lights came up at the sound of his voice. There was no cat on his chest; no cat glaring at him reproachfully from the floor, or the comm shelf or the desk. There was, however, a long white whisker caught in the weave of the coverlet. Ren Zel worked it loose and stared at it for several heartbeats before throwing back the covers and swinging out of bed.

There was no cat under the bunk. There was no cat in the ’fresher. Truly, his cabin was catless. As it should be.

And yet . . .

He held the whisker up to the light, admiring its length and its sturdiness, then went over to his locker. A moment’s rummage produced a thin glass sampling vial—another reminder of Selain—with a re-sealing top. The whisker slipped easily into the vial. He resealed it with care and glanced ruefully at the clock.