Shadow of the Warmaster

6

She looked up into her mother’s face. “Allo, Mama.”

“So what’s all this about? Sneaking around.” Adelaar touched her cheek briefly. “For a stodgy professor-type, you get yourself into more trouble…”

“I-told-you-so, Mama?”

“If you stopped falling on your face, I could stop having to pick you up.”

“Ooh-yeha. Like it was all my fault this happened.” Aslan sat up, clutched at her head. Stunned, she thought, understanding finally what had happened to her. Her mind wasn’t working all that well right now. Behind her mother she could see a tall dark man with a lazy twinkle in eyes so pale they might have been borrowed from another face, and beside him, Elmas Ofka looking grim. Aslan managed a tight smile. “Sorry, Dalliss, someone spoiled your surprise.”

Elmas Ofka blinked, but took the cue smoothly. “Waiting upwind was not the brightest thing we’ve done. One of our visitors has what one might call a nose for news.”

Adelaar’s mouth twisted into a half-smile; she wound a curl of Aslan’s hair about her finger and tugged it, hard, but she said nothing. She gave her daughter’s head a last pat, then forgot about her and marched over to the memplas table growing like a mushroom in the center of the chamber.

The shelter was large enough to hold them all with plenty of room left for moving about. Whoever’d brought Aslan in had laid her on a memplas bench close to the valve. The isyas were standing or sitting, their backs to the shallow curve of the wall; Lirrit and Harli glanced once at her then ignored her, the other isyas weren’t interested, they lived in gul Inci or at the Indiz Farm and there was a lot they didn’t know about events at the Mines. As the tall man and Elmas Ofka moved to join Adelaar at the table, Aslan saw for the first time the other member of the group, the Aurranger Rau. Elmas Ofka had mentioned the Rau in her report to the Council, so Aslan knew he was about and she knew who he had to be, there were NO other Aurrangers offplanet; she hadn’t actually met him while he was at University, but she’d heard stories. She was startled at the strength of her reaction to him, she wanted to pick him up, cuddle him, smooth her hands over and over that velvety fur; more than that, she felt intensely protective, if one of the isyas attacked him she realized with a great deal of surprise that she’d go after the woman tooth and claw. Amazing, she thought. With Pels kurk-Orso to prod her memory, she realized who the light-eyed man was. Swardheld Quale. Mama must have hired him, she thought, Ooo-yeha, she has to ’ve spent a fortune and a half. If ever Luck shat upon me, she did now. I’m going to hear about this for the next fifty years, if we don’t strangle each other before then.

At the table Adelaar toed up a chair, got herself settled, then she took a bundle of fac sheets from a case, squared them and set them in front of her. “The suspect files,” she said, “and the report on the internal security at the Palace that Quale saw fit to donate.” There was an astringent acerbity in the last statement. Quale chuckled, but didn’t bother to answer the challenge. She lifted out a flake-reader, then a case of filled flakes. “We discussed this and found it simpler to let you and your technicians do whatever marrying is necessary to make further copies of this material. The reader is included as another little gift from our generous friend here. The first twenty flakes contain the stats on the Warmaster and her… well, you can’t really call them a crew, the people living on board her. The twenty-first-they’re all numbered, using your system, of course, so you won’t have any trouble identifying what’s which-the twenty-first has the data on the free corridors. You’ll wish to inspect the flakes; don’t worry about inadvertently erasing them, they’ve been impressed. Loading’s simple, just slide the flake skin-and-all into the slot there, then watch the screen. You can manually jump about, there’s a pencil attached, write the number you want on that sensor there. Again, use your own system, the player has been adjusted to respond to it. If you want automatic random access, touch the pencil here. That’ll jump you about so you can get a fair idea what’s on the flake. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. You have something for us?”

Elmas Ofka nodded. “Har cousin,” she said. Harli Tanggаr marched to the table and set a large pouch in the middle. Without comment she went back to her post beside the valve. Elmas tugged open the mouth, took out a swatch of black velvet and a small metallic object which she unfolded into a balance scale and a pair of calipers. Then she withdrew several smaller pouches, opened one and let the pearls spill onto the velvet.

The exchange was quick and wordless and the two women began a meticulous examination of what each acquired from the other.

Quale left them to it and strolled over to Aslan. “Be interesting to know just who the surprise was for,” he murmured. He had a pleasant baritone, well, rather more than pleasant; for the first time in months Aslan remembered how long it was since she’d had sex with a man who excited her rather than scaring her rigid. What she’d had with Parnalee wasn’t sex or pleasure, it was a propitiation of the gods of chaos. And even that was, what? two years ago? He had nice hands, long fingers, they ruffed through his beard. It was crisp and short, a few white and gray hairs in the black, just enough to make him look distinguished. She wanted to smooth her fingertips over it, to…

She put the brakes on her imagination. “More tactful not to ask,” she said. “Not now, anyway.”

He dropped beside her. “When we found out you jumped the wall, Del was wondering if we’d have to winnow the whole population to find you.”

“Things were getting a bit… um… hectic, so I left.”

“Saved us a lot of time and trouble, you turning up like this.”

“Pride. And self-defense. Mama’s memory is her biggest asset unless you’re on the wrong end of it.”

He chuckled. “Having spent more’n half a year insplitting with her on board, I know what you mean. She’s a marvel when she’s working, though.”

“Swardheld Quale,” she said. “Pay his price and he gets things done. You’re a bit of a marvel yourself, if the stories are one-tenth true.”

“I’d put the truth level in those things considerably lower than a tenth. Say something like one part in ten thousand. Maybe they get the name of a place right, the rest is… you’re an ethnologist, you know how that goes.”

“Well, some heroes turn out to be a bit more than hot air.”

His right brow quirked up, the scar that nipped its outer end bent outward with the movement. “Nothing to do with me.”

“According to Elmas Ofka, you’re collecting slaves and taking them back.”

“Uh huh.”

“How many?”

“Depends on who we can locate?”

“You’re looking for specific people?”

“We’ve got a list of names we’ve matched up with names from the mainBrain. Rewards, aici Adlaar, rewards; when we get them back to. Helvetia, my crew and me, we collect some hefty gelt.” He rubbed at his jawline… “Couldn’t take ’em all even if I wanted to.”

“I have some people I’d like included in your collection. They might not be on that list, but if what I heard about your fee-structure is reasonably correct, what Adelaar’s paying you for this means you can tuck in a couple of extras without straining yourself.”

“Getting a little hostile, aren’t you?”

“I like to think of it as being practical.” Damn, damn, damn, knee-jerk, foot-in-the-mouth, what am I doing? Shoving him in a bag with Mama’s shithead friends. Maybe he belongs there. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m reacting like an adolescent. Brain damage? Or are stunners aphrodisiac?

“Quale.”

He got to his feet with a loose, easy shift of his long body that reminded her of Xalloor, the same sort of physical competence. He strolled to the table, toed up a chair and sat.

Elmas Ofka frowned at him. For a moment she didn’t say anything. She has too much riding on this, Aslan thought and felt a touch of sympathy for the woman, a sympathy she didn’t usually have, Elmas reminded her too much of her mother. “You’ve had a week to look these over,” she tapped the case of filled flakes. “Well?”

“Price is right, conditions aren’t too tough, far as I’m concerned, we can go.”

“When?”

“Thirty days.”

Elmas Ofka looked down at her hands, drew a deep breath. “Done,” she said. “How many can you lift?’

“Around seventy, eighty in a pinch. Should be enough for that lot.” He nodded at the case. “Something else, you’ll need to find someone who’s been up there recently, I suggest one of those Fiveworld guards; he’ll know things no one bothers to record.”

“Yes. We have acquired such a person and he’s being questioned.” She broke off, looked away from him. Aslan thought, this next is going to be important. She’s not sure of him, she could be a little afraid of him, which is something I never thought I’d see. “The Warmaster must be destroyed,” she said, “You agree to that?”

“Why not. I don’t want it.”

She relaxed. “Your reasons?”

“Impossible to handle without a huge crew, I couldn’t afford the fuel, I’d have my sleep wrecked by the horde of would-be heroes plotting to take it away from me.”

“I see. You understand my reasons?”

“Simple enough. As soon as Slancy berths at Helvetia, Horgul’s on the map. People will be heading here to take back their relatives, whatever, to trade, raid, generally poke about. The Warmaster’s a target that’d tempt too many of them. You’d have some self-proclaimed Emperor running your world before you blinked twice.”

“What about her stingships?”

“They’re parasited on her. Once you get rid of her, they go inert. If you’re worried about the crews, you can use your systemships to pull them out.”

“One last question. How do we destroy something that big and that powerful?”

“As I see it, you’ve got two options. You can sink her in the deepest part of one of your oceans. That’s the quickest method. Leave some ports open and she’ll die fast. Only thing is, there’s a fair chance in a few years you’ll have a pollution problem; it’ll clear up in a century or two, but you’d better make sure you keep people away from the place until then.”

“No!” The word exploded out of her. “Not the ocean. Never.” She drew her hand across her mouth, a quick nervous gesture, straightened her back with a jerk and stared at him, almost daring him to come out with something equally impossible.

“So, send her into the sun.

She thought that over. “How? Wouldn’t someone have to stay with her? Only two minutes ago I read that the shipBrain is programmed to save her if all aboard are killed; if you aim her at the sun and leave her, she’ll break away before she reaches it. And what happens then, do we have a runaway killing machine hitting back at the ones that tried to kill her?”

“Adelaar? That’s your field.”

Adelaar ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it down where the wind outside the shelter had teased it into spikes. “While I was inside the interface, I set a trap into the groundlink; it hasn’t been found and it won’t be. Since then I’ve been using odd moments to explore the shipBrain through it. That Brain is big, it’s powerful, and oh my, it’s dumb. It’s old. We’ve learned considerable since that ship was built. Some of us. I kept away from the defense areas, but I don’t expect trouble when I go after them, though I’d rather handle that up there. Working through a tap is too… um… limiting. As soon as we lift off… hmm, that’s something we haven’t arranged yet, Hanifa. Where do you want us to pick up you and your people? I think it’s best we come to you, rather than you to us. It’ll be easier and faster.”

Aslan looked from her mother’s intent face to Elmas Ofka; one expression mirrored the other; it was like a glimpse into the future, maybe a year or two after this night. Read the changes, where the world goes when the Outside wanders in.

“I can’t say without knowing a lot more about who’s coming and what the Council thinks. Perhaps you could supply some way of communicating that the Huvved couldn’t tap into? If so, we can settle arrangements without having to find time for another meeting.”

Quale tapped on the table. Both women started, swung round to face him. “I’ve got some handcoms in the skip,” he said, “they’re linked to the satellites I inserted when we got here, should have no trouble bridging the distance between our Base and yours.” He turned his head. “Pels, bring in a couple of those handsets, will you?”

“Wait,” Elmas Ofka said.

“Hang on a minute, Pels, huh?”

“When we talked before, you needed to know where to find locations inside cities. I didn’t forget that, I brought you a small gift,” she glanced past him, met Aslan’s ironic gaze, “another small gift to help you with that problem. Har cousin, take the Hunter down to the boats and bring back our passenger.”

Aslan watched the chunky isya valve out after Pels. What’s going on here, she thought, there wasn’t anything about this in the report she made or in any of the hours of records I plowed through. She rubbed at her eyes, remembering with regret the watersac she’d left hanging on the yizzy pole. Her mouth was dry and she was wrung out, sleepy, her head ached. She wasn’t interested in these games Adelaar and Elmas were playing with each other, she’d left home years ago to get the smell of greed off her skin. She gazed at the back of Quale’s head; his hair brushed his collar, black, soft, fine, curling a little; she wanted to touch it, let it bend over her fingers. Damn, oh damn.

The valve hummed. Pels came in; his black lips were curled into an odd grin, his ears were standing straight up and twitching a little. He was humming, she could hear a rumbling brumbrum as he trotted to the table, dumped the comsets onto the memplas and swung around to watch the exit.

Harli Tanggаr ducked through, stepped to her place beside the valve as the man following her straightened and looked around.

Parnalee, Aslan thought, good god, what’s she think she’s doing? How’d she get hold of him?

“Parnalee Tanmairo Proggerd,” Elmas Ofka said. “In the course of his work, he has visited most of the cities of the Littorals. When he joined us two days ago, I saw him as the answer to your need.”

Maybe, Aslan thought, but that’s not the whole story. What are you up to, Dalliss? Smiling, urbane, wearing his public face, Parnalee walked to the table, touched hands with Quale. He wants this, she thought, why? He looked over his shoulder at her and she saw the beast in his black eyes, hungry beast promising her silently what he’d promised in words. Undercut me and you’re dead. She shivered and made up her mind she was going to be very very sure she was never alone with him any time anywhere.

Quale got to his feet. “That’s it, then. Call us when you’re ready, Hanifa. You want to leave first, or shall we?”

Elmas Ofka closed the lid on the case, snapped the latches home. “We’ll go. Don’t get yourself killed.”