WARP world (7 page)

The insult was an obvious attempt to gain ground over him. “I’ve had partners.” He looked Kerbin up and down, “Though I prefer girls that aren’t built like boys.”

She bared her teeth at him, then pulled her visor down with a snap.

“Just the Shasir,” Seg said.

Kerbin turned and issued orders to the squad without another word to him.

Ama lifted the empty cask off the transom, dropped it to the deck and rolled it toward the bow. More grint. More expense. She was barely scraping any profit from these tours but they were all she had. Without a crew, she couldn’t run cargo and the
Naida
was too small and unappealing to the Damiar for Big Water transport. And she was sure Judicia Corrus was well aware of these facts.

“Miss Kalder?” a man’s voice called out from the dock below.

“
Captain
Kalder,” she raised her head and stopped the cask mid-roll, “are you looking for a tour?”

A face came into view. Ama frowned as Wirch Jorret—the least palatable of the men who had burdened her with an offer of marriage—stepped aboard, carrying a handful of cut flowers. She resumed her chore.

“You’re looking…healthy, Miss Kalder.”

“It’s bad manners to come aboard without asking the captain’s permission, you know,” she said, without looking at him. She had had enough of uninvited visitors.

“This is an urgent matter,” Wirch said, following her at a trot. “Your brother Geras informed me of the latest change in your circumstances.”

Ama rolled her eyes. Leave it to Geras to make a bad situation worse. He had to be blind not to see that Wirch’s only interest in her was her family name.

“My circumstances are none of your business. I told you last time I wasn’t interested in your offer Mr. Jorret.” Tipping the cask on end, she stood and faced him, hands on her hips. Over Wirch’s shoulder, she could see Captain Tather on the bow of the
Greehm
, watching her. Having a good laugh too, she was sure. “I think I was even polite about it. Now if you’ll excuse me,” she strode past Wirch, “I have another cruise tomorrow and I have to—”

“I have an addition to my offer, something that will make us both happy,” Wirch called, jogging after Ama again. “I understand the Judicia is taking away your license?”

Ama spun around, “And?”

“And I have a solution!” Wirch’s smile was practically swallowed by his cheeks. “If you agree to my offer of marriage—an offer, I should add, that most women of your age would be pleased to receive—you can sign this vessel over to me. With my position, I’ll have no trouble securing a commercial license in my name. You can keep this as a side business, for pocket coin. You see how perfect my plan is?”

Ama crossed her arms in front of her chest and leaned back, taking in Wirch’s self-satisfied expression with no small measure of skepticism. “You won’t have a problem with your wife working as a boat captain?”

“Work? On this boat?” Wirch let out a high-pitched laugh, “Oh goodness, no, no, whatever gave you that idea? I think you mean to tease me, Miss Kalder, but I’m not so easily fooled. Of course you couldn’t remain doing…this,” he swept his hand to indicate the whole of the
Naida
, his mouth puckering as if he had bitten into the bitter sac of a jinje fruit. “It wouldn’t be proper. No, we’ll hire a captain to run these quaint little tours, someone qualified. But I assure you,” he reached out with his free hand and touched Ama’s elbow, “all of the profits would be yours to spend as you wish.”

Ama looked down at the hand on her elbow, not as large or forceful as Dagga’s but every bit as unwelcome. “So, if I marry you, give you my boat and quit my work, you’ll let me keep a few coins?”

“For whatever you fancy,” Wirch said, nodding his head eagerly. “Geras mentioned that you are strong willed but you can see I am no tyrant.”

Geras was going to get an earful, or worse, when he returned from T’ueve. “Thank you,” Ama said, pulling the flowers from Wirch’s hand, “for your
generous
proposal.”

“Is that a yes?” he asked, following behind her as she walked to the port gunwale.

“What do you think?” she asked, dropped the flowers overboard and brushed the debris from her hands. When she looked back at Wirch, his mouth hung open, making his loose flesh droop even more. “Now,” her face hot, she stepped forward, forcing Wirch to step back, “get off my boat. This is still
my
boat, Mr. Jorret. Mine. Remember that.”

“Well, this is…I never…you…” Wirch blathered as he retreated, nearly falling as he reached the steps to disembark. “You’ll received no further offers from me, no matter how high your brother may ascend, I can tell you that!”

If only that were true.

Wirch half marched, half wobbled off the dock, accompanied by the sound of Captain Tather’s laughter.

“Always happy to amuse you, Tather,” Ama said, flipping an unmistakable hand gesture toward the bow of the
Greehm
before turning away and walking to the bow of her own boat.

“Don’t ever marry, Kalder. I’d hate to lose my entertainment!” he called back.

Hands gripped on the rail, Ama stared off to the horizon. A Shasir skyship was floating inland, probably to the Ymira valley and the Welf village there. Soon, Stevan might be up there among the robed spooks, bringing the blessings of the gods, the Shasir’kia, to the poor and downtrodden. For a price, of course. Always for a price.

Wasn’t that the way? The less you had, the more you were expected to give up.

Wirch’s flowers drifted by below. Ama shivered. There would be more offers, from him and others. As distasteful as her occupation was, she would soon be the sister of a Shasir’threa, and at the ‘old’ age of twenty, men would assume she was anxious to be wed.

Everyone wanted something from her and they didn’t care what they took from her to get it.

Well, there was always one option, something no one could take away from her. Her eyes moved past the flowers and stared into the dark water as her thumbs rubbed the leather of her nove. Disappearing was as easy as removing her collar, diving into that other world, and leaving everything behind. The question was, how far was she prepared to go?

The troopers, still riding the adrenalin leftover from their infiltration of the Welf gathering, busied themselves setting up the field warpgen, which converted stored vita to power the warp gate, as Seg examined their primary acquisition.

There was a loud
ahhh-kreee
from some nocturnal animal above them, probably avian, which made the anxious troopers even jumpier.

The Shasir Outer was unconscious. He was a scrawny thing, withered and aged. Seg wondered how he managed to carry all his ceremonial bric-a-brac, but lifting the robe he realized it was fairly lightweight. Most of the shiny parts were hollow and light, designed to awe and impress and not function for anything. He shook his head at the artifice and at the gullibility of the Outers who fell for it. Worshiping these people as conduits to a higher power? The natives were idiots. “This is the control unit,” he said, pulled off a star-shaped box, the one functional device in the collection of shiny junk, and passed it to Kerbin, who was holding a hand over her earpiece.

“We’ve got maybe thirty-five minutes until they sweep our way,” she said. “When that happens, we’d best be gone, unless you want a hundred dead Outers and a lot of trouble down the road.”

“Warp window in four and a half minutes,” Seg said, feeling much calmer now that the objective had been achieved.

From the observation point, he had watched the raid. The troopers had moved with honed precision, waiting until the right moment to isolate the target. That part had gone smoothly. On the other hand…

He looked at the whimpering girl, bound hand and foot and gagged.

“I didn’t request that one,” he said.

Kerbin smirked, the troopers tried to mute their snickers but it was clear they found the scene amusing. “She was in with the ugly Outer. Finding the holy or something like.”

“Yeah, found it on her knees, under his robes,” a trooper added, sparking another round of quiet laughter.

“Troops figured they’d get you your first caj,” Kerbin said.

“What?” Seg raised his hands in frustration.

“First mission.Your trophy.”

Seg looked from Kerbin to the girl. The first mission trophy was a Theorist tradition that went back centuries. And while it was true every Theorist still took a trophy caj on their first field mission, there were few that bothered ‘hunting’ their own anymore. Generally, the Theorist was given first pick of any caj brought back after the raid, keeping their trophy long enough to parade around at the Victory Commemoration. This had been Seg’s plan; he had no intention of taking caj for himself.

“This is not the time to be marking and collecting yet. We have work to do,” he said.

“Oh Storm, if you don’t want her, we’ll just keep her then. Have some fun after recon’s done,” Kerbin said. Her words were met with enthusiastic murmurs from the troopers. She pushed the Outer over with her boot, exposing her heaving bosom to the sky. “They’re all just the same anyway.”

“No,” Seg said. He looked down at the fear-stricken face and imagined a heavy metallic graft being implanted on the back of the Outer’s skull and neck. “No. That is sloppy thinking, squad leader. She moves as mine, but the transit comes out of your portion.”

“You can’t do that!” Kerbin pulled her helmet off to get close, stared up at him and impaled his eyes with hers.

“I most certainly can. You disobeyed my orders,” he said, his tone icy, maintaining his calm demeanor even as he fought down the impulse to reach for his sidearm. “It’s in your contract. Read carefully next time.” They glared at each other for a long moment. “But I will give you and your lot a chance to make it up to me.”

“Two minutes, boss!” one of the troopers called out.

They stared at each other a moment longer, before Kerbin broke away. She grabbed the Outer by the hair, hoisted her to her feet and shoved her toward the warp gate. The girl squealed through the gag and tumbled forward, landing on her face, then tried to squirm away. Kerbin planted a boot in the middle of her back, pinning her in place.

“Oh and mark her:
Do not process
,” Seg added.

“Would you like to hold its hand as it goes through, as well?” Kerbin asked as she pulled a band from her pack, scribbled Seg’s instructions on it and clipped it around the girl’s neck.

Behind her, Seg didn’t bother with a reply but he relaxed his shoulders a fraction.

He watched as the warp gate opened and the Outers were thrust through. The priest was due for a bad end. He would be processed. The Guild would empty his brain for a quick culture dump, then shoot the information back to Seg so he could begin the next step in the process. The husk that was left would be shipped off to the huchack ponds, the mines or the recyclers to haul metal and toil until the body followed the dead spirit.

Such was life.

As for the Outer female, he would deal with her when he got back. There had to be a better fate for her than being used and discarded by raiders.

Kerbin tugged her helmet back on. “Pack the warp gate, we move. NOW!” she ordered her troops. She didn’t speak to Seg at all, obviously willing to leave him to the mercy of the local search parties if he didn’t follow.