Plan B (24 page)

"In Terran it becomes 'Jela's fulfillment' or, perhaps, 'Jela's promise.'"

The language shifted again, without strain: "Trade might have it as 'Jela's contract' or 'Jela's dream,' depending on the speaker and how they think of Korval."

The scout went back to Liaden, the sentence spoken with inexorable exactness: "As I say, Explorer-bound-to-Korval, my family, Clan Korval, is accounted honorable by many, and we of the blood still live in the house first-built by Jela's arms-partner and bed-mate, Cantra yos'Phelium. Our motto is
I Dare
."

The words echoed, found their match in the language of the Troop, and Nelirikk heard his own voice, chanting the campfire tale from his youth:

"
And when Jela had faced this challenge, and made his dozen upon the day, a soldier called out from the ranks, 'How do you dare this, small soldier, when one rush could take you down?'

"
Jela shrugged, and smiled, and with knife in sheath and empty hands shown all around, said, 'I dare because I must. Who will dare for me, if I dare not dare for myself?'
"

Nelirikk sat quietly, recalling the fierceness of the struggle between himself and the scout—and the irony of it. That two of Jela's own should contend so! And who but the smallest should win? He laughed, softly, in the dark.

He sobered then, recalling things that the Troop did not know—or did not tell.

"Did Jela die on Liad, then?"

"Alas," said the scout, as sober as if the death had been yesterday. "Jela took one too many rear-guard, permitting his partner and her ship to escape. That, after all, was the essence of their agreement: he to guard the ship so the Tree might win through, she to guard the Tree, should he fall.

"She came away with his son-to-be-born and the very Tree that stands above my house. The tree here—Erob's large tree—is a seedling sent to seal the alliance between our two houses. And I must thank you for the Jela story, for it is not one we have in the Diaries."

"Diaries?" Nelirikk felt hunger lick through him. To read Jela's own words? "Jela's diaries?"

"Not precisely, though some of the log entries are surely in his hand. Jela's last years were spent with the space captain, my ancient grandmother. In her logs and diary she wrote down much wisdom, some her own and some his. The delms of Korval have kept the Diaries up, and study of them is part of each clanmember's education, so we do not forget that which must be recalled."

It was then that the scout offered treasure.

"Should we find ourselves able to leave here and return to Jelaza Kazone I will undertake to show what I may of Jela, if you like. The first diary entry of him, and the tree he carried out of a desert far, far away."

Seated as he was, Nelirikk contrived to bow. "A boon I would count it."

The scout inclined his head. "As it is in my power, Explorer."

There was not much to say then. Eventually, the scout stood, bowed formally and with meaning entirely too fine to be read properly in the available light, and slipped silently into the night.

Primary operations had been moved to the reserve bridge. Priscilla, in charge of Second Team, was at station on the main—no, Shan corrected himself—on the trade bridge. He gritted his teeth and ran the board checks with a thoroughness they scarcely required, since it was the third check he'd initiated within the last half-hour.

The mood on the reserve bridge was of tension harnessed into purpose. The mood of the captain was of frantic worry degenerating into terror.

Shan closed his eyes, deliberately removing himself from board-drill and bridge, and ran the Healer's mental exercise for distance under duress and calmness under calamity.

He sighed once, centered in an unruffled crystalline pool, then opened his eyes again to the reserve bridge.

Or the "war bridge" as Uncle Daav had used to call it—most likely to tease Shan's father. Shan's recollection of Daav yos'Phelium was sparse, and memory's eyes had lately tried to translate the barely remembered features into Val Con's well-known and beloved face.

Val Con, who they were to meet at Lytaxin. Val Con, who would be delm—and quickly, it was to be hoped, so he might sort this mess they found themselves in and show the clan its enemy.

Val Con, who had supposedly killed a man to gain his spaceship, who had warned Shan away from "appalling danger" while the
Passage
was being rigged for death—

"We break Jump within the twelve, Captain," Ren Zel said quietly from second board, and Shan pushed all such thoughts away, even the growing fear that Val Con had not managed his murder, and was himself dead on some backworld—aye, and his lifemate buried with him.

"I have the mark," he told Ren Zel. "Prime to me, second string through four toggled in sequence. Courier boat thirteen is cleared to depart the instant we break—your call, pilot."

Ren Zel flashed a look over-full with dark surprise, then inclined his head. "Captain."

"Trade bridge standing by, Captain," Priscilla's voice was calm as always, but the corner of the screen that should have contained her image was gray, gray, Jump gray.

"Acknowledge," he murmured. "Reserve bridge is sequenced backup boards two through four. Trade bridge should stand ready to take fifth string—captain's bridge?"

"Monitoring, Captain." Seth was as matter-of-fact as if they'd been discussing routine shuttle maintenance. Or as if he didn't know that matters would be very bad indeed by the time control of the ship shunted to the captain's bridge.

Ten seconds to break-out, by the countdown at the bottom right of the screen . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .

There was no room now for silly worries; no room for anything but the weary, familiar, bone-known drill while the ship gave one last gasp around them and the gray screens shattered into stars and an alarm went bong and . . .

"Courier, hold!" Ren Zel commanded and the collision warning howled as the main screen filled with the image of the tumbling abandoned weapons pod. . .

"All shields!" Shan called out even as his hands slapped the toggles.

The screen flashed, blurred—and the ship shook as the tremendous energy of the explosion bathed the
Passage
in radiation so fierce the shields flared.

"Air loss, Captain," Priscilla reported from the trade bridge. "Pod dock holed—emergency seals on."

"Get it!" Shan commanded, scanning the gauges, shifting a finger to touch another control. "Tower. Rusty, what do we have?"

"Ears," came the laconic reply; "but not many. You're carrying lots of stuff in the shield fields, Captain, and it's blocking most incoming. . ."

The main screen showed a throbbing blue-green shimmer with an occasional lightning-like flash. Shan flicked a glance at the filtering gauge and nearly gasped at the energy required to dim the scintillations to this near-blinding brightness.

"Mother attend us!" Priscilla cried. "Shan—"

"I see it." He flicked toggles, shunting computer time to the analysis board, which gobbled every nanosecond greedily—and offered up a schematic of the problem: The pod's energy and remaining ionized mass was caught between the shield layers, trapping the ship within a hollow sphere of deadly energy. If that searing plasma touched the
Passage
—

"Ren Zel, cycle the outer shield down to 200 kilogauss if you please. I'll take the inner up as high as I dare—and then you'll cut entire. On my mark."

"Yes, Captain."

"Mark."

"Two, Captain. One, Captain. Half. Quarter. Tenth—down!"

Shan nodded, though Ren Zel was too busy to see, and phased the inner shield up. The maneuver was chancy, placing the lighter coils of the meteor shields at risk—but that was minor for the moment—

He felt it then, as would the rest of the crew: the grate of a piercing headache as the magnetic and other fields phased in, coursed through the controlled shield and leaked into the ship.

Shan grimaced and cut back, watching the main screen as he did, seeing the filtering levels falling, falling. . .

"Engineering, magnetics check. All nonessential crew, magnetics check!" Priscilla's voice cracked over general in-ship as Shan brought the shields to a more reasonable level and the remains of the weapons pod blew into space like the gaseous nebular remnant of a supernova.

"Air report!"

"Under control, Captain. The pod bay took a direct strike from debris—a twelve centimeter hole and twenty centimeters of fracture."

Shan shuddered. Debris coming through an armored pod door with that much force—he could have lost a dozen people!

"We've got a temporary patch up," Priscilla continued. "We can replace that whole wall with a modular fix once we're—"

"Position report, Captain. Tactical report, Captain." Ren Zel's voice betrayed nothing, pitched exactly loud enough to override Priscilla's report.

"Tactical?" Shan asked.

"Tactical," Ren Zel affirmed. "There are warships all over this system. . ."

"Tower here! Shan, this feed—" snapped Rusty, quickly followed by Liaden-accented Trade: " . . . system is under attack by Yxtrang. Repeat, this system is under attack by Yxtrang. All shipping be warned. Flee and bring aid. This message by order of Erob."

"That's from a booster transmitter somewhere about six hours out," Rusty said. "I—"

"Bastards! Got you now! Ah-
hah
! We got you now!"

"No chatter!" Shan called out against Seth's bloodthirsty glee, and looked to Ren Zel, who was coolly accessing the military files available to his key.

"Hold a moment, pilot," he said quietly. "I have additional information here."

IDs blossomed across the long-screen as he shunted the auxiliary files available to the captain and first mate.

What Shan noticed first was the battleship, flanked by two cruisers.

The second thing he noticed were the swarm of smaller vessels, in-system strike-ships, clustered around the dreadnought like bees around a teel blossom.

The portion of his mind not engaged on the level of sight nudged him into awareness that the feed from the system beacon was still coming through, and that he was hearing—music. Heartbreakingly familiar music.

Val Con had made it to Erob.

It was Priscilla who noticed the other thing, and who said it quietly, on private line from her station to his.

"They've landed on Lytaxin, Shan."

Shan nodded and leaned back in the pilot's chair.

"So they have, Priscilla," he said, staring at the tactical screen, where the blockade was outlined, ship by deadly ship, cutting the
Dutiful Passage
off from Val Con—and from Korval's future.

He sighed.

"So they have."

The annunciator sounded as Shan began the calculations necessary for the final definition of the secondary equation. He called "Come!" without taking notice of the fact and dove deeper into the beguiling intricacies of vector-graphs, real-time movement, gravitational fluctuations, relative mass ratios, velocity transfer rate, and the potentiality of random speed shift.

A spiraling approach such as the
Passage
was currently committed to was impossibly complicated even without an Yxtrang armada between them and the target planet, he thought hazily, manipulating factors of seven. The math comp suggested applying a factor of 267 to shift potential and he OKed that with a finger-tap.

Not that the Yxtrang had taken any particular note of the battleship in their midst, after an initial flutter of radio exclamation. It was to be expected, however, that they were reserving their most serious displeasure for the
Passage
's closest approach, and if one extrapolated a grav-flux rate directly proportional to the movement of the primary natural satellite. . .

Equation framed
, the computer announced some little time later. Shan blinked at the screen.

"So you say." He sighed and leaned back, calling up a Healer's relaxation drill to chase away the ache in shoulders and back.

"Well," he said to the computer, tapping the
go
key. "If you think you've got it framed, let's see it, don't be shy."

"Captain?"

"Eh?" He glanced up, blinked the larger room into focus, and blinked again as he discovered the figure of his foster son, perched uneasily on the edge of one of the two visitor's chairs across the desk.

"Hello, Gordy. I didn't hear you come in, but I expect I must have let you in, mustn't I? Math does such very odd things to one's perceptions, don't you find?"

"Sometimes." Gordy's face was paler than usual and showing heretofore unsuspected lines. He pointed at Shan's computer. "I've been doing some math myself, if you've got a minute to check me."

Such seriousness. One should not have lines of grimness sharpening one's features at nineteen. Shan sighed and extended a long arm, saving the frame with a rapid series of keystrokes. He glanced up again.

"The name of your file is?"

"Murder."

Shan stared, ran a quick scan of that utterly serious emotive pattern and lifted both brows. "Auspicious."

The corners of Gordy's mouth tightened, in no way a smile, and he folded his hands tightly together on his knee. "Yessir."

Murder
was a series of three interlocking equations, as deceptively simple as haiku. Shan's hands went cold on the keypad as he scanned them. He looked at Gordy, sitting so still he fairly quivered with strain.

"These are quite attractive. Would you mind awfully if I frame my own set?"

Some of the stress eased from the boy's eyes. "I was hoping you would."

"Fine. A few moments' grace, please. Get yourself something to drink, child—and bring me a glass of the red, if you will."

"Yes, Father." Melant'i shift—and of a sort one rarely had from Gordy, who was after all a halfling, and full of a great many useless notions regarding dignity. Shan returned his attention to the screen.

Fifteen minutes later, he sat back and picked up his glass, tasting the wine before he looked across at the waiting boy.

"I regret to say that your projections seem accurate in the extreme. My own calculations indicate explosive conditions reached eight nanoseconds before your model, but I suspect this is merely a reflection of the difference in our ages. Youth is ever optimistic."