The Crystal Variation (91 page)

. . . at the places where the swirl was ragged and wrong. At the pattern that was taking shape out of the new darkness, as if in null reflection . . .

“That’s not looking good, if you don’t mind my saying so, Captain,” she said slowly. “I’m missing a lot of what I shouldn’t be off a map of this caliber.”

“Real-time updates,” he said, and tapped a finger against the display, bringing a certain, particular sector of nothing up close and personal.

“Headquarters,” he muttered, looking down. “Or—where Headquarters isn’t anymore.” He sent her a grin, hard and humorless. “We’re on our own.”

“Thought you didn’t report to Headquarters.”

“We didn’t,” he said seriously. “But even soldiers nourish expectations, Pilot. The expectation of the war eventually being won, for instance. The expectation that the High Command will spit in the faces of those who bought them, and take up true soldier’s duty again.” He sighed, and tapped the display, shrinking his particular bit of nothing back into the whole. “There are no expectations, now, except of an inglorious defeat, in which a few of us may survive to
run away
.”

“Life wants to live, Captain,” she said softly, and Wellik snorted.

“So it does. Speaking of which, how do your talks with the Families progress?”

“About as well as you thought they would when you put us in the position of having to deal with them at all,” she answered, too tired to even snarl. “Why’s it gotta be us? You got transport to spare.”

He raised his head and looked at her, as bleak as she’d ever seen a man.

“We take rear-guard,” he said, stark and plain. “It’s our duty and our honor to protect those who are not soldiers.”

“Meaning you won’t have ‘em in your way.” Cantra sighed. “Can’t say I blame you. Don’t much care to have ‘em in my way.”

“They do not properly grasp ship protocol,” Tor An added, surprisingly, from his vantage across the tank. “Pilot Cantra has very clearly explained ship necessities and the reasons which shape each, and I believe that Speaker Olanek has finally understood that upon points of ship’s safety, the Captain is the final judge.”

“She better understand it,” Cantra said to Wellik’s upraised eyebrow. “Because if she doesn’t, she and hers can stay right here, soldier honor be damned.” She sighed and raked her fingers through her hair. Deeps, she was tired. “They’re supposed to come back in six hours with a viable contract, and somewhere before that, the pilots have got to have some downtime.”

Wellik nodded, and moved toward his desk. “I won’t keep you much longer,” he said. “We did an analysis on the transitions of the ships the High Families hired—they’re heading In.”

Tor An looked down into the tank, then to Cantra, his brows pulled tight.

“There are . . . instances of Enemy action Inside, as well,” he murmured. “These layers of darkness on the captain’s map . . .”

“That’s right,” Wellik said. “They’re taking bites where it pleases them. Or, as soldier-kind learns in creche—no place is safe.” He picked something up off his desk. “Pilot Cantra,” he said, and tossed it, soft and low.

She caught it—another log book like the one Jela’d carried—and riffled the pages, finding them uniformly blank.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked. Wellik shrugged, and turned back to his desk.

“Whatever you want, Pilot. You seemed to have an attachment to Jela’s fieldbook, so I thought you’d maybe like one of your own. It doesn’t do me any good.”

“Right.” The leather felt smooth and soothing against her fingers. She tucked it inside her jacket and looked at Tor An, jerking her head toward the door. He took the hint, wobbling a little as he walked.

She sent a last hard look down into the tank—so
much
darkness—and followed him. Halfway to the door, she stopped; looked to the desk, and the big man bent over it, shoulders hunched.

“Get some rest, why not, Captain?” She said, easy and gentle. Comradely.

He shot her a glance over his shoulder, inclined at first to be prideful; then smiled, lopsided.

“I’ll do that, Pilot. Thank you.”

“‘s’all right,” she said and took the boy’s arm. “Let’s go, Pilot. Shift’s over.”

THE JOURNEY
to the inner lattices had tired the old one; the direct experience of the Iloheen’s work had struck him to the core. He had returned to his body changed—as who would not be, having beheld the death of stars?—and with determination reborn within him.

“I see it,” he had murmured, as Rool eased him into his bed, and his lady reached forth their hands to soothe him. “I see how it must be done . . .”

“Grandfather, that is well,” she said gently. “Rest now, and recruit your strength. We shall all stand ready to do your biding, when you wake.”

Perforce, the old man had slept, cocooned in healing energies. Rool straightened the quilt over the frail body, and smiled as the cat settled himself against the old one’s hip.

“Well done,” he murmured. “The scholar requires all the aid that we may give him.”

He moved into the common room, and over to the window. This state of idle waiting—it was new, and odd. And unsettling, as even here, in this form, and on this plane, he could feel the Iloheen’s will gathering. Soon. Very soon.

A disturbance in the energies of the room brought him ‘round from the window. He bowed, gently and with no irony intended.

“Lady Moonhawk. Brother.”

“Rool Tiazan,” the lady answered, with unexpected courtesy. “Sister. Doubtless, you are aware of the Iloheen and the progress of their work. Indeed, I should imagine that you might find the progress of their work . . . deafening.”

“Nearly so,” he admitted.

“You may, therefore,
not
be aware that our esteemed sister has put some portion of her forces into harrying the Iloheen at their work. I assume she does this to take advantage of whatever elasticity reside within the lines, thus far from the event.”

“Doubtless.” He flicked his will outward, found the lines and the pattern, thought a curse, and returned to his body to find Lute smiling sardonically.

“She can ruin all, can she not?”

“Nay, I think not—all,” Rool answered. “Though certainly she may introduce . . . unneeded complexity . . .” He turned his attention to the lady.

“I ask—your preparations are made?”

“The Weaving is complete. Fourteen templates have been crafted and stand to hand.”

“Fourteen?” Lute turned to her, eyes wide. “I—surely, Thirteen.”

“Nay,” she said softly. “Fourteen. You have earned your freedom, whatever that may come to mean.” She slanted a cool glance toward Rool. “I thank my sister for her instruction.”

He felt her move forward within their shared essence. “You are most welcome,” she said. “It falls to chance, now, all and each. We shall not meet again, I think, sister. Go you in grace.”

“And you,” the other answered.

The energies swirled—and Rool stood alone once more.

THE AROMA OF FRESH,
enticing goodness hit her the second she opened the door, and by the time the door had closed and she’d crossed the room to where it sat in front of the window, her mouth was watering, her body clamoring. She could see the very pod, outlined against the window, the branch bowed slightly with its weight—the pod that had been grown and nurtured especially—only—for her.

“Right,” she said and forced herself to move away from the window, to pull the leather book out of her jacket, and put it with finicky care in the very center of the desk. That done, she slipped the jacket off, shook it and draped it over the back of the chair. A couple of deep, centering, breaths, and finally she went to the window, leaned a hip against the wall, crossed her arms over her chest, and addressed the tree.

“Now, as I recall it,” she said, her voice rasping with overuse, “Jela told you this particular hobby wasn’t a good use of your resources. He was right, as far as I’m able to determine. But there’s something else you have to know and think on—a being as long-lived as maybe you’ll be.” She took a breath, and it was all she could do not to reach out a hand and take that pod, that smelled so good and looked ripe to eat now.

“What you got to realize is that
humans are hard
. You just can’t go shuffling their designs around, and changing them on the fly. They need study, and long thought. Planning. We live fast, compared to yourself; one tiny miscalculation and you’ve set twelve generations on the wrong course. Actions have consequences—and what you want to avoid is those unintended consequences that destroy all the good intentions you ever had.” She sighed. “I’m assuming, you understand, for Jela’s sake, that your intentions tend to generally align with humankind’s, which for the sake of this discussion we’ll call ‘good.’”

Across the cloudless sky behind her eyes, a dragon glided, smooth and strong, wind whispering over its wide leather wings.

Cantra nodded at the pod. “Me, now, I appreciate your care, but I’m not going to avail myself of that particular pod. I’m going to have some sleep, because I’m tired, and humans, they sleep when they’re tired.”

No response, save that the tantalizing aroma faded slowly, ‘til she couldn’t smell it at all. The pod in question broke away from its branch, with a sharp, pure
snap
, and landed on the dirt inside the pot.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and pushed away from the wall with an effort, heading for her bed.

Twenty-Nine

TWENTY-NINE

Solcintra

SHE GOT TWO HOURS’ SLEEP
before the kid woke her up, shoved a mug of hot tea into her hand and dragged her down the hall. There, they’d found the scholar in a fever of calculation so intense he’d barely been able to wrap his tongue around a non-math sentence. In the end, he’d simply spun the screen so they could see for themselves— ‘quations that sent a chill down her piloting nerves, and fetched an actual gasp out of the boy.

More tea and a quick meal happened between questions—not all of which were asked before it came time for pilot and co-pilot to depart for the meeting with the client.

Nalli Olanek was before them in the conference room, attended by a man so non-descript, Cantra thought he would have vanished entire, had it not been for the scroll under his hand.

“Speaker,” she said, inclining her head, but not bothering to sit down. “You get the contract written?”

“Indeed.” Nalli Olanek moved a hand and her companion rose, bowing with neither flattery nor irony.

“Captain yos’Phelium,” he said, offering the scroll across his two palms, as if it were priceless treasure. “It is my sincere belief that I have conveyed the agreed-upon duties, responsibilities and command chains accurately.”

She eyed him. “Who are you? If it can be told.”

He bowed again, and gave her a surprisingly straight look right in the eye. His were brown.

“My name is dea’Gauss, Captain. Account and contract keeping are the services which my Family has been honored to provide for the High.”

“I see.” She extended a hand, caught the boy around his wrist and brought him forward. “This is my co-pilot, Tor An yos’Galan. He’ll sit right here with you and go over those lines. If everything checks out with him, then he’ll bring it to me—same like you’ve got outlined in that section on command chains, right?”

“That is correct, Captain.”

“Good. Me an’ Speaker Olanek need to take a little trip.”

The Speaker’s eyebrows rose. “Do we, indeed? May one know our destination?”

Cantra gave her a hard, serious stare. “I want you to have a tour of the ship,” she said. “Get a good idea of what you and yours are contracting for.”

Nalli Olanek frowned. “We are contracting for passage off of Solcintra and—”

Cantra held up a hand. “You’re contracting to travel on a ship,” she interrupted. “Ever been on a ship, Speaker?”

The other woman’s lips thinned. “Of course not,” she said distastefully.

“Right. Which is why you need the tour. You not being wishful of putting your folk in the way of Captain’s Justice, it’ll fall to you to figure out how to keep them calm and happy and out of the captain’s way. And to do that, you need to see, touch and smell exactly what you’re contracting for.” She jerked her head toward the door.

“Let’s go. Soonest begun, soonest done, as my foster-mother used to say.”

* * *

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT
was earned, Cantra conceded: Nalli Olanek was tough. It was clear enough that the means and workings of
Salkithin
distressed her. By the time they’d finished the tour, and Sergeant Ilneri had delivered himself of a short lesson on slow-sleep so pat and slick she figured he must’ve only given it twelve hundred times before, the Speaker was pale, but she hadn’t broke out into active horror, nor demanded to be brought back down to cozy Solcintra where the council of law called outlaw to any such devices as the
sheriekas
might use, and others of more normal habit to the wider galaxy. Gene selection beyond physical pick-and-choose, commercial AI, even personal comm units were either disallowed or else heavily regulated on Solcintra, and though many such devices would have given the service class an easier life, they seemed as wedded to the minimal tech as their now-departed overseers.

Seeing her charge was like to wobble a bit in her trajectory, Cantra set them a course for the galley and waved the other woman to a table while she poured them each a mug of tea.

“You’ll want to be careful of that,” she said as she settled into the chair opposite. “It’ll be pilot’s tea—strong an’ sweet.” She sipped, watching with amusement while Nalli Olanek sampled her drink and struggled to keep the distaste from reaching her face.

“S’all right,” Cantra said comfortably. “What they call an acquired taste.” She had another sip and set her mug aside, looking straight and as honest as she could muster into Nalli Olanek’s cool gray eyes.

“Now’s the time to say out what you think, Speaker. Your folk going to hold still for putting their lives in the care of this ship—not to say the slow-sleep?”

The other woman sighed. “Truthfully, Captain—it will be a challenge, even in the face of such an enormous catastrophe as Captain Wellik proposes. Slow-sleep—” She closed her eyes, opened them, and pushed her mug toward the center of the table.