The Crystal Variation (30 page)

Well, no, he wasn’t precisely immune. Pilot Cantra
did
smell nice, he’d noticed that. He’d also noticed that she moved like a dancer, possessed a quick and insightful mind, and had a well-developed appreciation of irony. Noticing those things was inescapable, but it didn’t follow that his guard was down because he’d noticed them.

He had a feeling, though, that explaining any of that to Dulsey would only put on her the course to worry again, which wasn’t useful for any of them.

So— “Immune,” he agreed. “Most people aren’t, but I’ve never been confused with most people.”

She smiled slightly. “I am much relieved, Pilot Jela.”

“Glad to be of service,” he told her. “If it helps you, I believe Pilot Cantra goes out of her way to be cantankerous and irritating. She keeps people at a distance that way, where they’re less likely to fall under the influence of things she can’t control.”

Dulsey’s eyes widened. “
Can’t
. . . I had not considered that aspect of the matter, Pilot.”

“It’s worth spending some thought on,” he said, and gave her another grin. “Is there anything else on your mind, or should I clear out so you can get a shower?”

“I believe my concerns are answered, Pilot. I thank you.” She slid along the door until she reached the corner, giving him room to navigate.

“Any time,” he said, and slid sideways toward, and then out of, the door.

CANTRA WAS IN the tower
when he arrived, her arms crossed along the back of the pilot’s chair, attention on her forward screen. She’d cleaned up and changed into ship civvies, and he paused for a moment to admire the poised grace of her slim figure.

“Who’s Commander Loriton and why should I believe his info?” Her husky voice conveyed something like bored curiosity; her body language suggested that bored had the upper hand on curious. You had to admit, Jela thought, the woman was a pro.

“Commander Loriton’s the military officer in charge of the sector where Rint dea’Sord’s operations were consolidated,” he said easily, walking toward her. “Upon receipt of my report of Ser dea’Sord’s activities, Commander Loriton sent a task force to Taliofi.”

“And now the task force and Taliofi are gone,” she finished, and looked over her shoulder at him. “It says here.”

“It does,” he agreed.

Cantra straightened out of her lean and turned to face him, her movements smooth and unhurried.

“I don’t want to disrespect him, but maybe Commander Loriton’s charts aren’t up to date?”

“That would account for Taliofi going missing on him,” Jela allowed, “but it doesn’t quite explain the task force. It goes bad for commanders who mislay ships, see.”

“This is what you heard on the port that had you double-checking your info?”

“I heard Taliofi was gone,” he said, stopping a comfortable arm’s distance from her. “Loriton’s memo was in-queue when I opened the comm. My other source confirms.”

“The planet was mined, so says this commander.” Her voice was expressionless. “What he doesn’t say is why and who.”

“Who—
sheriekas
,” he said. “Most likely
sheriekas
, though it could’ve been dea’Sord himself. The info I nipped out of his system suggested he had the tech, and the ability. Why—to keep the task force from finding what there was to find.”

“Taliofi’s pretty far in for the Enemy to reach,” she said, which was true.

“It’s long been identified as one of the nexus points in the undertrade. A good bit of
sheriekas
wares come through Taliofi.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Unless Rint dea’Sord didn’t trade with the Enemy?”

“Rint dea’Sord traded with who and for what brought the most profit.” Her voice was lazy, like they were talking about any commonplace. “Mining the planet—doesn’t strike me as like him. He’d’ve just pulled back to one of his other worlds and set up ops there.” She lifted a shoulder. “Which he might’ve done anyway, there being no way of telling which particular atoms in a floating cloud of debris happened to have been him.”

“Loriton says they got surveillance on him quick,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t look like he moved on. It does look like the
sheriekas
thought an example was in order.”

The winged brows drew together in a frown.

“Example?”

“
We can reach in and crush you whenever and wherever we like
,” Jela intoned, making his voice deep and loud enough to come off the decking like a bell. “
Your world could be next. Fear us
.”

Cantra’s lips twitched. “Tactics, is it?”

“Some of that. More, I’d think—and this is me, I don’t have access to Commander Loriton’s analysis—to destroy whatever was there that we’d be interested in and that they couldn’t hope to hide, once the task force was down and searching.”

“Well.” Cantra glanced over her shoulder at the forward screen. “I didn’t dislike the notion of holding Ser dea’Sord too busy to pursue a disagreement. I don’t know that I find as much favor with a world going missing for my convenience. Our argument was with one man’s ops. Extensive they were, but I have my doubts that Granny Li or Baby Ti took part in or benefit from them.”

“Rint dea’Sord was trading with the Enemy,” Jela said carefully. “That put him against us—by that I mean those of us who aren’t
sheriekas
or
sheriekas
-made—and upgraded his actions from merely illegal to acts of war. He knowingly put that world and its people in harm’s way. He knew what the
sheriekas
are and what they’re capable of doing. Those deaths aren’t yours—or mine—they’re his.”

The green eyes met his and he caught a flicker of—something, gone too fast for him to read. Her face was smooth and uncommunicative—which he knew by now was the expression that covered her retreat into the depths of herself. He waited, there being nothing else he could usefully do.

“Do the
sheriekas
have a line on this ship, then?”

The question surprised him—and then it didn’t, as he recalled her priorities. He gave it the serious consideration it deserved, taking into account the things that Loriton hadn’t said, and which his secondary source had touched on.

“In my estimation, the
sheriekas
have seen your ship, but there’s no reason for them to have paid special attention to it, or to have it marked for reprisal. It was just one ship among many that happened to pass through Taliofi Yard.”

“Not quite,” her voice had a slight edge to it. He looked at her carefully.

“If you have info, Pilot, now’s the time to share it with your co-pilot.”

She sighed, lightly, reached behind her and spun the chair around. Dropped into it, and waved him to the co-pilot’s station.

He sat, and spun to face her, arms on the rests, deliberately at ease. Almost, he began to project a line of goodwill, but caught himself, and raised an eyebrow instead, waiting.

A corner of her mouth lifted—maybe in appreciation. It wasn’t any harm thinking so, at least.

“I ever tell you how I happened to be master of this ship?” Cantra asked. She must have known she hadn’t, but if she was in a mood to trade camp tales, he had no objection to that.

So— “No, Pilot, you never have. I’d be willing to hear the story, though. If it can be told.”

“It can be told,” she answered, her voice taking on a certain, not-displeasing, rhythm.

“For some number of years, I sat co-pilot to Garen yos’Phelium, of out Clan Torvin. Garen being the very last of Clan Torvin—and for all I ever found, the first, too—when she died, the ship passed to me. No secrets there, and as straightforward and by-the-legal as you could ask for.

“Where the story gets murky and interesting, though, is a few years further back again. And the question you’ll be wanting to ask yourself is this: Where did
Garen
get this ship? A pilot as fine as you are will have noticed there ain’t nothing shabby or second-rate about this vessel. It has some interesting features, not the least of which is that first-aid kit back there in the wall.”

She sent him a sharp green glance. He lifted a hand, fingers framing,
go on
.

“Right. Now, it’s well to remember that Garen didn’t say much, and of those things she did say, you’d do well to discount half. Problem was knowing which half, if you take me.”

“I knew somebody like that once,” Jela said, to show that he was following her. “The war had taken him, shaken him up and pitched him out. He didn’t have any context for the experience, couldn’t put together what had happened inside his head. Worse luck, he was the only witness to an event of some interest to the military. Intelligence tried to get the info out of him by talking him through it.” He raised both hands, showing empty palms. “They used drugs finally, then had the Generalists sort out the data-dump. Same problem—how to decide which was hard info and which was an attempt to rationalize what had happened.”

“That would’ve been Garen,” Cantra said, and sighed lightly. “What I pieced together—over years, now—from what she said and what she didn’t, was that this ship came to her through captain’s challenge, and that the captain defeated had been actively working for the Enemy, from which he had gotten the ship and all its glittery toys.”

Jela inclined his head, not really surprised.

“And what Garen had used to say to me, as often as she said anything, was that the things built by the Enemy, they never forgot who made them, and they called out—and were heard.”

He considered that, taking his time.

“There are ways to clean out
sheriekas
homers,” he said finally.

Cantra lifted a hand, let it drop. “She cleaned house. Every time we got new snoop-tech, we cleaned house. That would be one of the reasons we have those guns you dote on, instead of the pretties that came with. The first-aid kit—that we took our chances with, it being useful beyond the maybe of being heard. But now I’m wondering if there had been
sheriekas
listening at Taliofi—and if they might not have heard
Dancer
singing to them, and known her for one of their own.”

He felt the words filling his mouth—the easy, comforting, not-quite-true words that soldiers said to civilians who were asking about things they had no capacity to understand. There was no doubting Cantra’s understanding—and she wasn’t one to value comfortable lies over hard truths. Tough didn’t begin to describe Cantra yos’Phelium, heir to Garen, out of Clan Torvin, whoever and wherever they might be.

Sighing to himself, he swallowed the easy words, his fingers sketching the sign for
thinking . . .

Across from him, she leaned back in her chair, relaxing bonelessly, apparently satisfied to await the outcome of his thinking, if thought took him fifty years.

It wasn’t quite that long before he shifted straighter in his chair; the movement drew her eyes, and she gave him a comradely nod.

He returned it, and sighed, letting her hear it this time.

“The ship itself isn’t
sheriekas
-made, though from what you tell me, they had the refitting of it. You’re right to think that they would have seeded it with homers and tracers and all manner of listeners. Some would have been visible to our scans—more, as time went on. My ‘skins did a scan when I first boarded—that’s a military grade scan, and it might be that I have some things on-board that haven’t made it out to the Dark Market yet—and the ship scanned clean. Whether we
are
clean . . .” He snapped his fingers.

“If we could read, discover, subvert or destroy everything the
sheriekas
can, have, or will produce, then we wouldn’t be losing this war.”

Silence for a beat of five, during which he was very conscious of the weight of a cool green gaze against his cheek. She leaned forward in the chair, hands cupping her knees.

“So you think it’s possible, but not likely, that
Dancer
was heard at Taliofi,” she said. “And undecided on the issue of whether there’s anything in fact to hear.”

He inclined his head. “That’s a fair summation, yes.”

“And we’re bound for the Uncle,” she murmured, then gave him one of her wide, sudden grins, which was enough to make a soldier’s heart beat faster, even knowing that it was more likely than not bogus.

“Does it occur to you, Pilot Jela, that life is about to get interesting?”

Twenty

TWENTY

On Port

Scohecan

THE GARRISON
was a scarred survivor of the last war, its cermacrete gates patched and re-patched, the guard shack nothing more than cermacrete-roofed nook wedged between the front wall and the forward shield generating station.

The generator itself was of slightly more recent vintage—a venerable OS-633, which was, in Jela’s opinion, the most stable of the old-style units—meticulously maintained.

By contrast, the security scans were only a generation or two behind current tech. Though they were maintained with the same attention as had been lavished upon the generator, it was obvious that the template library was outdated.

The M Series guards at least were aware of the deficiencies of their equipment. One approached him as he stepped off the scanning dock, holding a civilian issue security wand in one hand.

“Arms out at your sides, legs wide,” she said. He complied; she used the wand with quick efficiency, and he was shortly cleared.

“Specialized equipment?” he asked as the second guard dealt with his docs and credentials.

The first guard gave him a look of bland innocence. “Adjunct equipment, sir.”

And very likely added into inventory and standard search procedures without recourse to such details as the commandant’s approval. Though, if the commandant was also an M . . .

“Papers in order,” the second guard said, holding them out.

Jela received the packet gravely and slipped it into an easily accessible pocket. The first guard spoke briefly into the comm; turned with a nod.

“Escort’s on the way. The commandant has been informed of your request.”

“Understood,” Jela said, and followed the first guard out into the yard to await the promised escort. Overhead, filtered through Level One shielding, the sky was a slightly smoky green that reminded him improbably of Cantra yos’Phelium’s eyes. The star was approaching its zenith, and frost glittered in the shrinking pockets of shadow.