Plan B (28 page)

But, if not the Port, where might he go on a planet riddled in war?

"To Erob, of course," he muttered, fighting the lifeboat's tendency to go upside down relative to planetary surface. "Do try not to be a slowtop, Shan."

If Erob were overrun by Yxtrang, scattered, murdered and no more? Shan sighed and glanced again at the fuel gauge.

"Why to Val Con, naturally enough. And pray the gods he's close by."

It was not wise, what he did next, and he was certain his teachers in Healer Hall would have counseled strongly against it. But there really was no choice, given the fuel gauge—riding in the red zone, now—the planetary maps the lifeboat did not carry and his own rather strong disinclination to die.

The little ship was steady for the moment. Shan gripped the edge of the console, closed his eyes and dropped his inner shield.

There was no time for finesse, no time to prepare himself properly. He brought Val Con's emotive template before his Inner Eyes and flung himself open, spinning out in a search that was far too wide, concentration centered on that unique pattern.

He found instead a vast and welcoming greenness, familiar from childhood, comforting as the touch of kin.

Shan took a breath and abandoned Val Con's template, listening for what the Tree might tell him.

It was not, of course, his own Elder Tree, but Erob did keep a seedling. Nor did Jelaza Kazone necessarily speak to those who served it, but it had ways of making itself and its desires known.

The Tree was not read as a Healer might read a fellow human. Rather, the Tree borrowed referents from one's own pattern, displaying them in sequence at once familiar and vegetative.

Thus, the message arranged itself within Shan's senses: Joy—Welcome. Joy—Welcome. Joy—Welcome. Spice—whiff and stem—snap, from a memory of breaking off a leaf. The taste of Tree-nut along his tongue. A second impression of leaf, and a sense of pushing, gently, away.

He was aware that his hands moved across the board and was helpless to stop them. After a short struggle, he did open his eyes and found the dials a blur, the fuel gauge half-gone in red. Within, the Tree touched one last memory—warm lips laid soft against his cheek—and withdrew. Shan slammed his Inner Wall into place, shook himself and looked to the screens.

Number three showed an Yxtrang fighter, growing rapidly larger.

The Tree's influence upon his body had produced a set of coordinates, residing now in the console's readout. Shan flicked a toggle and locked them, sparing a moment to hope the Tree possessed an adequate understanding of the limits of fuel and the action of gravity on an unpowered object.

The fighter loomed larger. Shan turned his attention to the guns.

Pop guns they were, though Seth had put his to good account, and badly drained besides. Shan's hands flashed over the board, shutting down auxiliary and non-essential systems, shunting the extra power to the guns. The energy level crawled upward, stabilized well below the ready line.

Shan chewed his lip, checked the board, checked the fighter—gods,
close
—checked the screens—and stopped breathing.

The Tree's coordinates were bringing him in on an encampment. He could discern tents, machinery,
soldiers
mistily in screen six. There was a standard, snapping bold in the wind below: an enormous white falcon stooping to its kill down a field of starless black.

Terrans. And no doubt close enough to the place the Tree had intended him to go. But not with an Yxtrang on his tail.

His hands moved again, dancing over the board, shutting down everything but air and the computers, sending every erg of energy to the guns and
still
they held below the line.

Shan flicked a glance at his pursuer, another at the camp and the surrounding terrain. He reached up and pulled the worksuit helmet over his head, hit the toggle with his chin and tasted canned air. His hands moved across the board, shutting down ship's life support, feeding the energy to the guns.

The gauge topped the line. And stopped.

Inside the helmet, Shan nodded and made one more adjustment on the board, draining what was now the topmost cannon, feeding everything he had into the belly gun.

Power surged in the single live cannon. He could have wished for more. He could have wished for both guns full primed and on-line. For that matter, he could have wished for a ship to equal the one that came against him, but time was short. He had what was needful.

Just.

He flicked a toggle, relieving the boat of its mindless adherence to the coords, and slowed, dropping a few artfully wobbled meters toward what appeared to be a canyon, or possibly a quarry, at the extreme edge of the encampment.

Behind him, the fighter took the bait.

The other pilot jammed on speed, guns swiveling. Shan waited, wobbling slightly lower—though not too low—toward that tempting rocky edifice. Waited until the fighter was committed, until there was no possibility of a fly-by—and no possibility of a miss.

Jaw locked, he whipped the thrusters, spending the dregs of his fuel. Agonizingly slow, the lifeboat tumbled. The fighter snarled by, the other pilot seeing the trap too late. Shan hit the firing stud, and the single canon blared, hot and bright and brief.

The fighter exploded, raining burning bits down into the encampment's perimeter.

And lifeboat number four, guns and fuel utterly expended, fell the few remaining meters to the planet's surface.

He opened the hatch into the wary faces of two soldiers—one Terran, one Liaden—both holding rifles.

Quietly, he stood on the edge of the ramp, gauntleted hands folded before him. He'd taken the helmet off, exposing his face and sweat-stiffened hair; the land breeze was cool against his cheeks. The sounds were bird sounds, and the slight wind abrading leaf and grass.

It was the Terran who spoke first, sounding friendly despite the carbine she kept pointed at his chest.

"You OK, flyboy? Nasty fall you took there."

"Thank you, I'm perfectly fine," Shan assured her. And smiled.

The flip maneuver had worked precisely as he had hoped. The lifeboat had fallen about 12 meters, to land, right side up relative to the ground and unharmed, on the rock apron at the entrance to the quarry. The pilot had received a stern shaking and would have bruises to show, but the space suit and crash webbing had cushioned the worst. "Perfectly fine," stretched the truth, given other conditions, but not nearly into fantasy.

The Terran nodded and turned to her mate.

"Call and let 'em know we're bringing him in."

He slung his rifle, pulled a remote from his belt and spoke. "Quarry patrol. We have the pilot, safe. Will transport." He brought the unit to his ear, listened with a frown, then thumbed it off and hung it back on his belt.

"The sub-commander wishes to speak with him," he told his partner.

"Right," she said and jerked her head at Shan. "OK, friend. Let's take a walk."

Eye on the rifle, Shan hesitated. The woman shifted, her demeanor abruptly less friendly. He held up his hands, gauntleted palms empty and unthreatening.

"I do beg your pardon! I have no wish to keep the sub-commander waiting, but the case is that I am separated from my ship and I have every reason to believe that an attempt at contact will be made, once it is recognized that my position is stable. I should be here to receive that message when it comes."

The woman shook her head. "Sorry, pal. Sub-Commander Kritoulkas wants you and we're under orders to bring you. Wouldn't care to have shoot you in the knee and carry you myself, but we can do it that way, if you insist."

Shan lowered his hands, taking a deep breath to push the sudden rush of distress down and away from the present moment.

"I would hardly wish to put you to so much trouble. By all means, take me to Sub-Commander Kritoulkas."

Sub-Commander Kritoulkas was a sour-faced woman with iron-gray hair and a prosthetic right hand. She glared at Shan where he stood bracketed by his two guards, sweaty and out-of-breath from his hike. Heavy-duty work suits are not made with strolls through the woods in mind.

"What else?" she asked, transferring her glare to the Terran soldier.

The woman saluted. "He did say he was separated from his ship, ma'am, and expecting a call."

Kritoulkas nodded. "Tell Comm to keep an ear out." She glanced at Shan.

"Anything we should say for you?"

He considered her blandly. "That I am safe and among friends."

"Think so, do you?" She looked back to the soldier. "Pass it, if the call comes. Dismissed."

The soldiers saluted and were gone, leaving him alone with the sub-commander's glare.

She sighed and braced a hip against her desk, folding her arms over her chest.

"OK, we'll take it from the top. Name and rank. If any."

"Shan yos'Galan, Clan Korval," he said. "Captain of the battleship
Dutiful Passage
."

"Battleship," she repeated and shook her head. "You don't look much like a soldier to me. Course, you don't look much like a Liaden to me, either." She shrugged. "Whatever. What're you doing here, Captain?"

"My ship took damage and I was separated during an Yxtrang attack that was launched during outside repair."

She nodded. "That's one. Take a step further back and tell me the other one. Why is your battleship in this system?"

Shan sighed, shifting his shoulders inside the hot, heavy suit. He emphatically did not want any more questions from this abrupt, sour-faced woman. He wanted a shower. He wanted his lifemate, his ship, and the familiar routine of the trade route. None of which he was likely to receive in the near future, if ever again, though the shower might just be possible, if he were polite and answered the sub-commander's questions.

So.

"Family business. My clan is allied to Erob, and I have reason to believe that my brother is here."

"Yah? Name?"

"Val Con yos'Phelium." Shan watched her face closely, but saw no recognition there.

"Not somebody I come across. You sure he's here?"

"I am positive that he is here," Shan told her, the recollection of that painfully familiar music flowing from Erob's warning beacon vivid enough to raise tears. He blinked.

"Perhaps another name," he said to Kritoulkas' glare. "Miri Robertson?"

That
meant something to her. She straightened, glare melting into astonishment. "Redhead? She's here, all right. Think she'll own you?"

"Yes," he said, by no means sure of it.

Sub-Commander Kritoulkas nodded.

"OK, Captain, here's what. Gonna have to pass you up-line anyhow, that being where we got folks who are real interested to hear about what things look like upstairs. We'll keep an ear on your 'boat down there and let your ship know you're among friends." Her mouth twisted a little at that. It might have been a smile.

"Meantime, we got a shift-change coming up in about four hours, which is about enough time for you to clean up, get something to eat and a catnap. Under guard, you understand, because I'm damned if I believe you're regular military and I ain't having you endanger my people."

A commander's natural concern was the welfare of her people. Shan's opinion of the sour-faced sub-commander rose slightly and he nodded.

"I understand entirely, ma'am. Thank you."

She snorted, and raised her voice, bawling for "Dustin!" A shortish Terran strode in from his post outside the tent and saluted.

"Yes, ma'am."

She jerked her thumb at Shan. "Take this guy to draw clothes and a couple sandwiches. Shower and time-out at the medic's station. Stick close and get him to the departure squad on time."

Dustin saluted again. "Yes, ma'am." He turned and nodded at Shan, face and eyes neutral. "OK, sir, let's go."

He turned toward the door, heard Kritoulkas clear her throat behind him.

"One more thing, Captain."

He looked at her over his shoulder and, incredibly, saw her grin.

"Damn good shooting, coming in."

Shan lay on the hard cot, head on a crinkling, antiseptic-scented pillow, and closed his eyes. He had showered, and put on the fighting leathers provided by the quartermaster. He had forced himself to eat one of the half-dozen sandwiches Dustin had pried out of the mess tent, and had drunk several cups of water. Now, more or less alone, if one discounted the guard at the cubicle's entrance, he prepared himself to enter trance.

He took a breath, and another, building the correct rhythm. The noises of the camp faded, his heartbeat slowed. When the time was proper, he slipped over into trance.

Healspace is formless, a void of warm frothing fog. There is nothing but fog within Healspace—until something more is required.

Warm within the formlessness, Shan spoke his own name. He smiled at the man who stepped out of the fog to join him, and extended a hand adorned with a purple ring to take a hand on which an identical stone flashed its facets against the fog. With the deft surety of a Master Healer, he opened a line of comfort between them.

The turmoil he confronted was acute: Grief, joy, guilt, fury, bereavement, horror, love, confusion, repugnance. My, my, what a muddle, to be sure, but after all, demanding nothing more taxing than a Sort and a touch of reweaving. His scan found no irredeemable catastrophe, no resonance which so imbalanced the personality matrix that forgetfulness must be imposed. The matter was not at all complicated, and work could go forward at once.

In Healspace, there is no time. There was the work, and the results of the work, Seen by Healer's Eyes. The work consumed the time that the work required. When it was done, Shan smiled at Shan, opened their arms and embraced into oneness.

Healed and at peace, he turned in the foggy nothingness of Healspace—and checked.

This
place was not Healspace. Nor was it the medic's tent cubicle. This place was stone, strange and brooding: A vast stone cavern, or so he thought at first. Then he saw the weapons, hung orderly along the wall.

The weapons . . . shimmered, in their places, as if each held its present form by whim and might as easily be something, quite, else. He focused his attention on a particular sword, and felt it slip from edge to shield, from shield to explosive, from explosive to. . .