Shadow of the Warmaster

14

Adelaar circled round and round that problem, then went at it obliquely, running the numbers of the corporeal essence of the ship, its dimensions and locations, ignoring for the moment the visual map, only the numbers mattered, matching and crossmatching, tagging subtle disparities, replaying the visuals with the disparities corrected, tagging discontinuities that appeared when that was done. Aslan could see that her mother had only the tiniest of threads to pull on, but that seemed to be all she needed; when an hour had crept past, it was obvious she was going to unpick the knot. The farther she got the easier it seemed for her, it was almost as if she were beginning to read the minds of the programmers who’d done the original work. Funny, Mama didn’t get along at all well with Sarmaylen or his friends. My friends, Aslan thought, maybe that’s why. She’s as much an artist as they are, I thought so before, I know it now. That’s not just skill, that’s a leap of… of… I don’t know, whatever artists leap at. She sighed. My father’s a poet, my mother’s a… well, whatever. What the hell happened to me? Ah well, as Xalloor says, deary dai, we do what we can. Missing Xalloor, she strolled to the panels, drew water from a spigot. It’s a good thing Churri took off with Quale, she thought, he made Mama nervous. She sipped at the water. It was lukewarm and tasteless, but her mouth was still dry from the reading stint. First time I saw Mama fluttery like that. Ooh-yeha and forty hells, four months in the insplit going home, that is not going to be fun for anyone, not if she starts after Xalloor. She can be a bitch on wheels when she’s jealous. Aslan wrinkled her nose as her mind flipped back to the time when she was fifteen and the boy she was sneaking out to see and what happened when Mama caught them. Deary dai, indeed.

She gulped the rest of the water and moved over to watch Pels work. His eyes flicked in an unceasing round from screen to screen to screen; the lifepod sector drawn in green lines was on one with an inset showing the Hordar packing the crew into the pods, another had a map of the Palace, the city, the landing field, on the third there was a map of the system with pinpoints of yellow light converging on the whitepoint that was them, or so she assumed. She touched his shoulder. “Are those something we should be worrying about?”

His ears twitched. “Grand Sech has been trying to talk to someone up here the past hour. Those are the stingers heading at us.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh?”

“It’ll be at least an hour before they’re close enough to be a bother. Until then there’s no point. Besides, we won’t be able to get outside the skin before Adelaar’s finished over there. She going to be much longer?”

“I don’t know, I don’t operate in those realms.”

“Me either, I used to think I was good, but she’s a witch.”

“She’s never let me watch her work before. I don’t know why.”

“Huh.” He dug his claws into his neck fur, scowled at the pod area. “Almost ready to pop ’em. Igsala poong! That Proggerdi. We can’t sit around sucking our toes or he’ll stick a torp up our collective arse.”

Aslan glanced at her mother, grinned. “Right on cue,” she murmured.

Adelaar flung her arms up, wriggled in the chair, yawned. “Got it,” she said. “Where’s Quale?”

“Doing what you told him, getting ready to blow the clone,” Pels said. “The Grand Sech is birthing fidgets because he can’t get through up here; he sent stingers to see what’s going on. They can’t burn a way in, but unless I remember wrong, more than one of them will have overrides on the lockseals.”

“Transfer the trace here.” She watched the pinlights creep for a moment, sniffed, then began playing with the pad… “I’ll let them think they are in control till they’re close enough…” she broke off, concentrated for a moment, “to Tairanna, then all their little popbuggies will peel off and put them down where they’ll have a lot of privacy and time to contemplate their sins.” She sat back, yawned again, laced her fingers across her stomach and examined her thumbnails. “I think we ought to let him hear us.” She tilted her head back, smiled at Aslan. “Don’t you think we owe him a little sweat?”

“No.” Aslan sighed. “It gives him too much time to knife us, it’s safer with him dead.”

Adelaar laughed at her. “That’s my little pacifist.”

“All right, make it the clone dead first.”

“Ruin my mood, mmh?” Adelaar straightened. “Fetch my kit over, will you, Lan? I left it by the door there. I might as well use this time to work on the sun-intercept-and a few other notions I’ve had… um-Pels, have the locals finished loading the crew?”

“Just about, why?”

“Tell them I’m going to start launching the pods. The stingers won’t bother them. Then you get hold of the Hanifa and have her order her people back on the tug. When we leave, we don’t want any snags or strays.” She looked over her shoulder at Aslan, eyes bluer than blue and guileless. “Keep the customers happy,” she murmured. “Dead locals don’t trade rosepearls for security systems.”

Aslan wrinkled her nose but said nothing; she wasn’t about to be drawn into that ancient argument. She brought the pack to her mother, then went to stand beside the door, looking out into that absurdly oversized antechamber. Briefly she wondered where Parnalee was and if he suspected he was being out-thought and out-engineered. At least, she hoped he was. The Bridge was empty except for Pels and Adelaar. And her, of course. Elmas and her isyas were carrying their dead to the tug hold and getting them stowed for the trip home. Xalloor was in the tug too, running the wounded through the autodoc, if she’d managed to convince the Hanifa it wasn’t a subtle attempt at assassination. Aslan pressed her lips over a giggle. There’s a product for you, Mama, say the doc performs in its usual fashion. Quale was a long time gone. What was happening down there in the armory? If he couldn’t get in, he’d have been back before this. He should have taken Pels with him; Churri was there, but what use was he? Mama used to tell me when I did something dumb with my pc that I was just like my father, clumsy as a tantser calf. Jamber Fausse and his lot are there; they’re no use, except as strong backs if something needs shifting and for standing guard. I hope they are standing guard. He should have taken Pels. Why isn’t he back yet? Maybe they’re all dead. We can’t look round the ship without breaking Mama’s blocks. Aslan sighed. There was no point standing at the doorway like some stupid chatelaine waiting for her lord to get back from the wars. She grimaced at the image. Oooh-yeha, Lan, you’re worse than a teener reading sublimated sex books. Face it, woman, he’s done everything but come right out and tell you he’s not interested. I wonder why? He’s hetero and I’m not a hag. T’k. She ran fingers through her hair, pushed it off her face. This isn’t getting me anywhere. She walked with quick nervous steps to the station where Pels was working.

Adelaar had turned the launching of the pods over to him while she busied herself doing enigmatic things to the Brain. The dataflow was so quick and so esoteric it gave Aslan a headache. Much more satisfying to watch the pods blow, at least she knew what was happening, the ship’s crew including all its Huvveds were on their way to Tassalga for a bit of involuntary exile. Permanent exile, if the Huvveds had any sense. The way feeling was running among the Hordar, they could end on the chopping block if they got back to Tairanna. The inset showed that most of the locals had cleared out of the loading area; the few left were clearing up odds and ends and loading these on one of the pallets. She recognized Akkin Siddaki and his protйgй the boy thief from gul Brindar, Kanlan Gercik and two of her students from the Mines. The rest must be settling down in the tug. It’s almost over. All we have to do is blow the clone. Then we leave. Then we go home. Then I stir up a mess of trouble for those foul and loathsome Oligarchs. She savored her triumph. They sold me into slavery; they’re as guilty as Bolodo. What a lovely thought. I suppose they’ll claim they had a legitimate contract with Bolodo. Let them try it. University can field a team of ethicists and lawyers that’ll wipe their faces in their own muck till they choked on the stink. And the Chancellors will authorize and organize the team without their usual fuss and obfuscation, not for me, for the Unntoualar. They mean it, dump on him who says anything not my species is my prey, dump it deep and stinking. They’ll go after those Oligarchs with everything they can throw at them. It surely will not hurt my tenure standing that they can throw me at them too. Hmmp. Like Quale says, I’m lagniappe. I wish he’d get back.