Derelict For Trade

20

"You've been what ?”

"Challenged to a duel," Dane said.

They were crowded into the tiny space between Dane’s and Rip’s cabins. Dane backed into his room, snagging ahold of his bunk to keep from bouncing gently against the wall. He looked out at the three faces: Tau’s unbelieving, Van Ryke’s mildly surprised, and the captain’s angry.

"That’s it," Jellico said, his gray eyes lambent points of silvery light.

"Get all our crew together. We’re blasting out."

"Can’t, Chief," Van Ryke murmured. "Can’t pay our shot."

Dane watched the captain’s jaw work as though he were aching to say, "Watch me."

Another silence ensued, this one more tense than the first one after Dane’s announcement. Dane knew the captain could get them out of the lock; with his piloting, they could probably outrun those unwieldy Shver dreadnoughts they used as Monitor Patrol ships—but once they were

outside, they wouldn’t be able to run up to jump speed before the defense guns could blast them into atoms.

Which was probably just what Flindyk was hoping for.

Jellico gripped the ladder so hard his knuckles went white, but when he spoke again, his voice was utterly emotionless. "I will not stand by and permit that scum to annihilate one of my crew." He turned his head, pinioning Dane with his cold, hard gaze. "You did not provoke this."

It wasn’t even a question.

Dane knew that if he had, he would have been given at least a fair hearing, but nevertheless he was glad to be able to shake his head. "Came up behind me. I didn’t even know he was there until he started spouting the ritual challenge at me."

"He what?" came a new voice.

Everyone looked up—or what they were used to thinking of as up when they were dirtside—to see Ali Kamil hanging by his knees from the ladder to the next level, floating with his arms wide, a curious grin on his handsome face.

"Thorson," he said, "how about some details? What exactly happened?"

Dane shrugged, repressing a spurt of annoyance at Ali’s drawling assumption of superiority—as though he had all the answers. He’d do that before a firing squad, Dane thought with a faint return of his old amusement. Out loud, he said only, "Nothing to report. Rip and I checked the mail drop, found nothing, started out, saw no one. Suddenly this Shver is behind me—I feel a bump on my arm, and he starts in with the challenge. His brethren were with him, and they hemmed us in, or we would have tried to get away, and hang ’honor.’ "

"I don’t see much honor in one of those two-ton heavyweights taking on a human who can barely walk in their cursed heavy gee," Stotz said sourly from his perch in the ladder well to the lower level.

"It’s a frame-up," Tau said, frowning. "We all know it. Why should Dane have to go out there at all?"

"Because it’s a legal requirement," Ali said from above. "Same as being arrested."

Looking quickly from Stotz to Ali, Dane felt his sense of up and down shift; suddenly they were at either end of a room, and he was lying on the floor. Vertigo tugged at his guts, and he had to lean against the wall and force himself to orient again.

"So what do we do?" Rip asked from his doorway. "We can’t let Dane go back there and get murdered."

"If you all will grant me a few moments"—Ali’s drawl was more pronounced than ever—"I believe a solution is possible." He waved his arms grandiloquently.

Wilcox made an impatient movement copying Ali, and said, "Well, enlighten us!"

The others laughed—except for Van Ryke, who sighed, looking up at Kamil as though at an erring child. He was about to speak when Jellico said suddenly, "Get down here, Kamil. Or at least orient yourself the same way so that smart mouth of yours is below your eyes, where it belongs."

Ali grinned and with a careless flick of his feet loosed himself from the ladder and floated gently to the deckplates in the midst of the little group.

"Here," Van Ryke said, opening his door. "We’ll have another meter of space if we step this way."

They moved to his cabin, some going in and some standing just outside. Ali perched on one of the cargo master’s tape storage bins, crossing his legs. "Now, Viking," he said instructively, "begin again, from the point at which your challenger touched you—or, more correctly, forced you to touch him, however inadvertent it was. What exactly happened?"

Dane shook his head. "I felt a pressure on my right arm. Turned, saw that big long knife that the Shver citizens wear. He’d bumped against me with that knife—"

"Bumped against you, or hit you with it?" Ali asked, his posture still relaxed but his gaze intent.

"Made it so that I hit him."

"Was it still in its sheath, or out?"

"Sheath, I think," Dane said, after a moment’s thought.

Rip nodded corroboration. "I would have remembered if it’d been out, with that serrated edge—"

Ali waved this away with an airy, impatient gesture.

"Dane, my innocent," he said, "a new lesson I am about to follow myself." He raised a long forefinger.

"Cough it out, Kamil," Steen said with a pained look. "Quit the playacting."

"What is it," Ali addressed the air in patently fake sorrow, "about navigators that makes them so distrustful of their fellow beings—particularly the very engineers who propel the ships they guide?"

"We’ll debate philosophical etiquette later," Wilcox said with a grim smile. "Get on with your solution, or are you just gassing?"

"Not at all," Ali said, becoming slightly more serious. "When we first got here, I downloaded what I could find about dueling, as I thought—things being what they were— if any of us were to be challenged, it would probably be yours truly. I felt I owed it to my crewmates to be prepared for any contingency. When I found myself confined to quarters, I pursued it further, this time out of interest. Our friends the Shver are a very interesting culture. Within the context of their militancy, they can actually be quite subtle."

While Steen and Ali had been talking, Van Ryke had called up some files on his computer. Jellico divided his time between scanning those and watching the talk. Now he gave a faint nod.

Ali grinned. "I can save you the search—what’s going on is this. Deliberately crossing into another Shver’s personal space is a dueling offense—as would be expected from even those used to a heavy world. Gravity is gravity, and stopping, starting, and especially falling are no light matter—"

Rip groaned. Van Ryke coughed, hiding a laugh.

Ali continued as if sublimely unaware of the reaction to his pun. "—so they are careful to stay out of one another’s personal space unless they have to fight for some political or social or familial reason that cannot be aired in public. Hitting someone with the shauv knife is the usual means of challenging someone for reasons that the challenger cannot, or does not, want to explain."

"Ah," Van Ryke said. "Now I think I see. Go on, my boy."

Ali nodded. "Now, there are further refinements. To hit someone means something different from permitting oneself to be hit, if you see what I mean. Hitting someone means you have a legitimate grief. To permit oneself to be hit is a little more mysterious; it can mean that the challenger has been forced into the duel."

Dane nodded slowly, faint hope entering his tired brain for the first time since that dreadful trip to the mail drop. "I see, and there’s also the sheathed blade and the bare blade, which I do remember reading."

"Right," Ali said. "Hits with bared blade mean to the death, no questions asked."

"I thought all duels were to the death," Rip said.

"Well, technically they are," Ali said. "Here’s where the Shver get subtle. Let’s suppose that someone is forced by the clan to challenge someone else to a duel, someone the individual has no quarrel with. He lets the person know in much the manner that Dane received his challenge, and this guides the combatants in their choice of weapons. If the fight is declared satisfactory to the challenger, whether there’s a death or not, then the insult can be declared dead, and they leave the best of friends."

Rip sighed. "Except these guys can choose their own weapons before the duel. At least that’s what Dane told me while we were coming back up here. Though blasters and fire weapons that could breach the habitat walls are forbidden, anything else goes, right?"

"Right," Ali said, grinning.

"Then that oversized elephant can show up with a twelve-foot-long

force blade big enough to take on an entire Patrol platoon if he wants, and Dane can’t do a thing about it—and the only weapons we have to choose from are sleeprods and. and. Frank’s ultrasonic feedle pipe!"

Ali had begun to laugh, but he stopped, a strange look in his eyes.

No one spoke for a time. When the silence began to seem protracted the captain’s quiet voice was heard. "Ali?"

"I have to admit, I had everything figured out except what kind of weapon Dane might take," Ali admitted. "But I think. I have it."

"We can’t get our hands on any illegal weapons now," Steen said, his impatience making him sarcastic. "The duel is in less than an hour!"

"Won’t have to, if I’m right," Ali said.

Van Ryke frowned. "This isn’t a game, my young friend," he murmured. "Dane has to go out there and face whatever weapon this fellow brings. He’ll be in heavy grav against someone who is bigger, stronger, and masses three times what he does, and has been trained in fighting since birth. I’d say he’s facing a terrible risk."

"He faces that risk no matter what," Ali said. "We’ve been forced into that much of a situation. But think of this: that Shver is not a Golm, has never been near us before. He caused the duel in the most neutral manner he could—"

"He has to face Dane armed with something deadly, or he’s declared a coward and an outcast," Rip said.

Ali nodded. "Right. So Dane has a choice. Either he’s more deadly, or." He looked up. "Steen—you and Dane and I need to have a talk."

A piercing whistle on five distinct notes echoed through the dim tunnels of the Spin Axis.

The sound had become very familiar to Rael Cofort. She looked over at Jasper Weeks, who was already packing up their gear.

Rael’s heart thumped warningly but her hands stayed still as she used her thin immune-probe to restimulate the ill-healed muscle tissue of the

man lying against the wall before her.

As soon as she was done Jasper dropped a healpak over the reddened flesh, now responding again to the memory, deep in bone and sinew, of the original injury. Healing would go to completion. The patient twisted slightly and pushed off with his feet; moments later he was gone, diving through a narrow crack in an old lock.

"Come! Come!" Tooe shrilled, grabbing the gear from Jasper’s hands.

They could hear the sounds of the Monitors clearly now; Rael’s heart was pounding as she rebounded after Tooe, shooting through a maze of abandoned air ducts in which ghostly fronds of ancient dust fluttered lazily.

When they were safely away, Jasper veered close to Rael. "Fifth one," he muttered. "I wish I knew what was going on."

"What’s going on is easy," Rael replied as they reached a dim chamber full of immense, flaccid sacks on the walls, dim and bulky in the reddish light—Rael was irresistibly reminded of enormous fungus. In this case, she thought, fungus marked with the sigil of chemhazard. Whatever had leaked out of them was long dissipated.

Then they dived down into what seemed to be a dark well. Blackness closed around them and Rael flew along with her hands out. They bumped into a corner, another, and then saw light—and her orientation snapped into a new alignment: now she was ascending toward the light. "The Monitors are out in full force," she continued, now that she could see Jasper. "What we don’t know is why."

They stopped at a nexus obviously well known to Tooe, and waited until, ever so faintly, a signal was heard. Tooe whistled back. After a long space of two or three mintues another whistle came, equally faint.

Rael did not know the meaning of these particular signals, but that one five-note sequence would probably feature in nightmares to come, she thought grimly as once again they started off. Flee! Monitors coming!

The signals being sent back and forth now were most likely the regroup points. Tooe led them on a wild flight through the endless ducts and abandoned chambers; Rael knew she could have been led through the

same area again and again and not notice, the whole was so alien to her.

But at last they stopped, this time in a long, thin room with what looked like a threshing machine at one end. Rael looked at it, and at the bare walls leading to it, and was glad that no one could turn on the grav and force them into it.

Then she forgot it as, once again, patients of all ages and races began drifting in. She and Jasper unpacked their kit with practiced speed, and with no words wasted motioned the first person to come forward.

Before, they had gotten well through at least a few patients before the alarm came. This time, though, Rael was just about to activate her scanner when the first two high notes sounded, faint and far off, but no less frightening for that: all around them people stiffened, alert, then bounced off the nearest surface and zoomed away through an opening.

The alarm came again, clearer, now the room was empty; it was a five-note series, but different.

Tooe turned glowing yellow eyes to Rael. "Deathguard!" Her voice was shrill with strain. She whirled about, then froze again, her crest flat and quivering.

Another high note sounded, so high Rael knew what she had suspected before, that the Spinner people communicated in the ultrasonic range.

"Truce," Tooe said. "Conference—"

"What does that mean?" Rael asked, as Jasper once again began packing the gear.

"Tooe not know, me. All those Monitors—Deathguard blame us, maybe. Monitors look for us, Monitors look for them, who knows? Maybe they know."

"Do we have to go to this conference?"

Tooe’s pupils went wide and black. "Oh yes." She nodded vigorously enough to make herself bob gently against the wall at her back. "Or they come to us."

Rael felt the cold grip of fear at the back of her neck. Jasper was looking at her, plainly waiting for her to decide.

"Let’s go," was all she could think of to say.

A long, crazy journey later, Rael Cofort floated, hands loose at her sides, behind Tooe and Momo. Jasper was just above her, one hand hovering near the sleeprod at his belt, though his pale face was mild and polite as always.

The neutral place was brightly lit and bare, affording nowhere to hide for those with treachery in mind. The air was warm and redolent of a faint metallic tang, and Rael felt more than heard a deep, ambient hum.

Positioned around the circumference of the chamber were four clumps of people, all poised near a flat surface in wary readiness for action.

Rael half-listened to the steady rise and fall of voices. Nunku and two other Spinner gang leaders spoke a strange melange of languages that she couldn’t make out at all. They all three faced the black shrouded figures against one wall; as yet none of these had spoken.

The followers of the Spinner gangs kept absolute silence, including Tooe and Momo, so Rael and Jasper were also quiet.

She was just as glad of the chance to watch, to reassess. She moved slightly, partly to get a clearer view and partly to ease her aching neck—and saw one of the sinister dark-clad beings across the room flick a glance at her from inimical-seeming eyes. She kept her hands wide, palms out, in the universal gesture of goodwill.

Working in null gee was just as tiring as laboring in gravity, she realized as she watched the conversation, for one had to constantly brace oneself against the reaction of one’s efforts; one couldn’t rely on weight to absorb the energy of push and press—and one’s mass had very different meaning here.

Despite all those interruptions a greater crowd than the first time had appeared, causing her a strange emotional response midway between exhilaration and despair, the latter because she knew she could not help them all. Her supplies would give out, or she would.

A change in the speakers’ postures broke her thoughts. The three facing the black-shrouded figure were stiff, still, wary; a tense silence fell, and then a deep Shver voice growled something from inside the black cowl.

The three whipped around and Rael found herself the focus of their attention. Someone spoke. Tooe touched Rael’s arm and said, "They have questions."

Rael felt Jasper move restlessly at her side.

She sent him what she hoped was a reassuring glance, and pushed away from the wall she’d floated near.

Everyone’s heads were oriented in one direction—a concession to the Shver, she figured.

The dark-cowled one spoke, and Nunku said, "The Deathguard wisheth to hear thy story from thine own lips."

"What story?" Rael asked. "How we found the derelict, or what has happened since we arrived here?"

"Everything," Nunku said. "They say that those from the Solar Queen have brought the Monitors into the Spin Axis. This changes what hath been accepted for lifetimes."

Rael heard the threat implicit in her soft voice, and felt danger clamp her insides. She knew very little about the Deathguard, other than that they were Shver outcasts and assassins—and that they had nothing to do with anyone outside their numbers, unless they were paid. These Shver outcasts would not have any interest in the plights of the other inhabitants of the Spinner, so they certainly would not care about justice for the Starvenger or the Ariadne.

She took in a deep breath, cast her mind back to Denlieth, and started to talk.