Sweet Starfire (6 page)

Cidra felt a glimmer of excitement rush through her. She was on her way, off in search of a legend. For the first time she acknowledged that the search, itself, was going to prove fascinating.

The ship altered course again, and this time Cidra turned around a little anxiously to see if Severance had awakened. When she saw him lying spread-eagle on his stomach, face to the cabin hull, she decided to act. She went over to the bunk and reached down to touch his shoulder, only to find she had made a terrible mistake.

There was no startled shout or sleepy, questioning groan. Severance simply exploded off the bunk at the touch of her hand. He was on the deck, feet spaced apart in a fighter’s crouch, before Cidra quite realized what had happened. The small weapon he had used on Scates was in his right hand. Somehow he had gotten it out of the utility loop he’d hung beside the bunk.

Cidra froze, not daring to breathe as his eyes flickered in recognition. With a muttered oath Severance dropped the black metal object back into his loop. The poised tension went out of his body. On the bunk Fred exposed his teem briefly, and then went back to posing as a rug.

“A few more surprises like that, Cidra, and one of us isn’t going to make it as far as Renaissance.”

She cleared her throat. “I just wanted to tell you that we’re approaching Lovelorn. The ship seems to be altering course. I assumed that, as pilot in command, you might have some interest in the matter.”

“Not much,” Severance assured her. “This baby can land herself if necessary.” Nevertheless he went forward to check the winking lights on the command console. “Saints know she’s done it before.” He yawned and massaged the back of his neck with one scarred hand as he stood staring down at the controls.

“Severance?”

“Hmmm?”

“What is that instrument you carry? The one you had in your hand a moment ago?”

“It’s a remote for a Screamer.” He leaned down and de-pressed a red-lit control, watching the screen in front of him as he did so. Severance Pay banked gently into a turn.

“I’ve never heard of a Screamer,” Cidra said.

“I don’t imagine you’ve got a lot of use for them in Clementia. They’re not exactly legal.”

“But what does it do?”

“It’s very good at making uninvited visitors scream.” His obvious preoccupation bothered her. “That’s not much of an explanation,” she said reproachfully. Cidra was accustomed to an educational system that answered all questions as completely as possible. She was also trained to keep asking questions until she was satisfied with the answers.

Severance shrugged, still watching the landing setup on the screen. “It’s a device that’s designed to jam the frequency of human nerve impulses. That’s about the only way I can explain it. I’ve got the main system installed here in the ship. I carry the remote with me.”

“Scates didn’t scream when you used it on him.”

Severance glanced at her. “He was already half out. The remote just finished the job you’d started.”

Cidra stiffened. She wasn’t sure if she had been rebuked. But her curiosity persisted. “Does the device function automatically whenever someone comes aboard?”

“It can be set that way. I leave it on when I’m gone and switch it off with the remote when I’m ready to come back aboard. But it can also be triggered manually. See that switch there on the console?”

“Yes.”

“That will trigger it. There’s another one back near the head of my bunk.”

“You would turn it on while you, yourself, were on board? What about your own nerves?” she asked.

“Curious little thing, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized formally. “I don’t mean to pry into your private business.”

“Uh-huh.” He sounded skeptical. “Well, the answer is that I can set the remote to protect me from the effects of the main system. Fred’s safe because his nerves work on a different frequency than ours. Have a seat, Cidra, we’re ready to hit dirt.”

She realized that his patience had reached its limit, so obediently she strapped herself into the passenger seat and fixed her gaze on the lights of Lovelorn. A few moments later Severance Pay settled gently down into the landing field, and Severance cracked the hatch.

“I’ll be gone for about an hour. No more than that. We haven’t got time for you to wander outside and have a look around. You wouldn’t find much of interest, anyway. This is a pretty dull town. You stay here and guard the castle. When I return, I’m going to put this ship into space as fast as possible.

If you’re not here, you’ll get left behind. Clear?” He sealed the collar of his gray shipsuit as he spoke.

Cidra nodded, and then asked impulsively, “Have you ever seen a real castle, Severance?”

He glared at her. “It was a figure of speech, not an invitation to more questions.”

“I’ve heard that the Ghosts left behind a structure that might have been a fortress,” she ventured thoughtfully. “On Renaissance.”

“Why don’t you take a nap, Cidra?’

Her eyes widened. “I couldn’t do that. You’re leaving me in charge.”

Severance muttered something unintelligible and started through the hatch. “That was a figure of speech too. Forget I said it. Fred is in charge. Stay out of trouble, Cidra, if you want to see Renaissance.” With that he vanished into the cool Lovelorn night. The hatch hissed shut behind him, sealing and locking itself.

Cidra felt movement near her sandaled feet and looked down. Fred was investigating the hem of her black-and-silver robe. Even as she watched, Cidra saw his three rows of teeth appear. She yanked the fabric out of reach just in the nick of time.

“Don’t you dare chew on my clothes! Just because you’re the one who is officially in charge, don’t get the idea you can terrorize innocent passengers.” Then she smiled at the creature. Fred continued to expose his teeth, and Cidra chose to believe he was smiling back. She reached down to scoop him up into her arms and discovered it was difficult to pick up a rug. There seemed to be no stable bone structure inside Fred.

He didn’t appear to mind the awkwardness of her grip, however. He simply wrapped himself around her forearm and continued to grin. Cidra looked for something resembling eyes.

“You’re a Lovelady rockrug, aren’t you? I’ve seen holotapes of your kind sunning themselves on mountain rocks. How do you like shipboard life?”

There was no answer, but the three sets of teeth disappeared into the tatty fur covering. As Fred settled down to sleep on her arm Cidra thought she saw a couple of small black eyes wink shut. It was hard to be certain because of the scraggly fur. Her arm felt pleasantly warm with the rockrug wrapped around it.

She wandered around the tiny cabin, investigating the functional, if spartan, lavatory facilities and the miniature galley with its preserver and heater. She checked the preserver to see if there were enough non meat food packs aboard to hold her until Renaissance. It was a limited selection, at best. Teague Severance was definitely carnivorous. Typical Wolf. Well, if he were willing to do without some of the vegetable packs, she might not starve to death. For someone who had been brought up to appreciate exquisitely prepared food, the prospect of two weeks of preserved vegetables was not a pleasant one. But one had to make sacrifices when one set out on a quest, Cidra reminded herself as she shut the preserver. The heroes in the First Family novels always sacrificed comfort when they went adventuring. She ought to know. She was an expert on First Family novels. The only real expert in Clementia. She wandered over to the sleeping berths and fished around beneath Severance’s bunk for her precious pack of books. Before she found it, she encountered a small metal chest wedged in behind the crate of ale.

She was far more intrigued by the unimposing storage container than she should have been, perhaps because she knew immediately that the box would contain something that was very personal to the enigmatic man who was taking her into space. For the first time in her life Cidra found herself wanting to explore the private side of another human being without waiting for an invitation. It took an amazing amount of fortitude to push the unopened chest back into the sticky storage net. But the ingrained rules of privacy were far too strong in her to allow Cidra to do otherwise. She pulled out the pack of books.

Her mind and body had settled down again. She would happily occupy the next hour reading. She deliberated between the elegantly worked volume of Nisco’s Serenity and Ritual and the anonymous collection of essays and poetry known as Passages to Appreciation. She knew she ought to choose something from one of them, but somehow she wasn’t in the mood. Cidra dug a little deeper into the pack and came up with a hidden bundle of data slips that contained her collection of novels. Novels didn’t warrant much more than cursory interest on the part of Harmonics specializing in social history. She’d had no competition when she’d chosen to become an expert on them. But Cidra loved novels. She had acquired a sizable collection on slips, and when the time had come to leave Clementia, she had been unable to abandon them.

Cidra removed the reader and a slip that contained one of her favorite tales and curled up on the lower berth to read once more the adventurous story of a mythical First Family colonist. Without any hesitation at all she skipped along until she came to the love scenes. The love scenes in such stories held an interest for her that she had never stopped to analyze. But she was more exhausted than she realized. Cidra was in the middle of a torrid seduction when she fell asleep.

It was the distinct impression of wrongness that awoke her a few minutes later. For a moment she lay quietly, eyes closed, and tried to analyze the feeling. She immediately realized that Fred was no longer wrapped around her arm. She could feel the warmth of him lying on her stomach, but he didn’t seem quite as boneless as he had earlier. There was a tension in him that had communicated itself to her and awakened her.

Cidra opened her eyes and looked up into the muzzle of a Garing Immobilizer. A part of her recognized the classic safeguard sidearm, even while her brain sought to adjust to the shock of seeing one pointed at her. A large, gloved hand was wrapped around the grip.

“Just keep calm, lady, and nothing’s going to happen to you.”

At the sound of the rough voice Cidra managed to jerk her eyes from the Immobilizer to the swarthy face of the safeguard holding it. When he saw her stricken look, he smiled bleakly and used his free hand to display his certificate of authorization.

“I don’t understand,” Cidra murmured; confusion replacing some of the initial fright. Harmonics never had trouble with the authorities for the simple reason that Harmonics never committed crimes. Both safeguards and Harmonics knew it. She had grown up with that serene knowledge. It was built into her. Then she remembered Scates lying on the floor of her hotel room. “What’s wrong? He’s all right, isn’t he?”

The man holding the Immobilizer appeared amused. “Who? Severance? As far as we know. Don’t worry about him, he’ll be back in about forty minutes. He ran into a little delay collecting his mail, you see. We arranged it that way.”

They didn’t seem to know about Scates. Feeling simultaneously relieved and guilty, Cidra relaxed slightly. “But what are you doing here?” She realized that a second uniformed man was standing near the command console, and her searching gaze rested briefly on him. “How did you get on board? The hatch was sealed.”

The man standing over her answered. “Didn’t you look at my certificate? We’re port security. We have bypass plates for all registered mail ships. Now sit up very slowly. You from Clementia?”

She nodded. Fred scuttled down into her lap as she sat up cross-legged on the bunk. Her hand brushed past the small switch that could activate the Screamer, but Cidra hardly noticed. She was watching Fred bare his teeth. He didn’t appear to be smiling this time.

“Good. That should make things nice and simple. We won’t have any trouble with you, will we?”

Obediently Cidra shook her head. “Of course not.”

“Fine.” He glanced at his companion. “We won’t even need to put a tangler on her, Des. She’s a Harmonic. She’ll stay out of trouble.”

“But what do you want? If you have business aboard, I would have been happy to open the hatch. I don’t understand what this is all about.” Cidra turned an unwavering gaze on the armed man. “Whatever it is you’re after, you should consult with the master of the ship.”

“We’re not quite as formal here in Lovelorn as you folks are in Clementia. We don’t always have time for good manners. What we’re after is in the cargo bay, and on this kind of ship it can only be unsealed through the command console.”

Cidra kept her hands carefully folded in front of her. “Then you should definitely speak to Teague Severance.”

The safeguard grinned. “He’s not likely to be very helpful under the circumstances. We’re here to remove some cargo he picked up in Port Valentine.”

“But the shipment from Port Valentine is scheduled to be taken to an outpost on Renaissance.” Cidra kept her voice very clear and polite. She betrayed nothing of the uneasiness she felt, realizing that her best defense right now lay in maintaining the impression these men had of her. They couldn’t have dealt with many Harmonics. In their line of work they simply weren’t likely to encounter people from Clementia. Her appearance and dress had led them to mistake her for a Saint, so she would play the part.

“Don’t worry yourself about it, Otanna. This isn’t Harmonic business. This is a matter of port security.” The man holding the weapon spoke to the silent figure by the console. “Find what we need, Des?”

“It’s here. The bypass is working through possible code combinations now. We’ll have the bay opened in a minute or so. What about her?”

“She’s not going to give us any trouble.”

The first man holstered the Immobilizer and smiled again. He smiled a lot, Cidra thought Too much. She didn’t like him, and neither, apparently, did Fred. There was a curious humming sound coming from the vicinity of the three rows of teeth. Automatically Cidra reached out to stroke the rockrug.

“We’re all set,” the man called Des announced with cool satisfaction. “The bay’s open. Let’s get the stuff and get out. I don’t want to be hanging around here when Severance returns.”