The January Dancer

Suantraí: Dog Days

You may recall, the scarred man says, taking up the tale once more, that Fir Li had called to Hounds…

…with the thought of penetrating the Confederacy, to confirm on that end what he had sent Greystroke to confirm on the other. But Hounds are few and space is large and travel through the creases sufficiently slow that in the three and a half metric weeks since he had sent the call only three Hounds had proven near enough to respond.

The first to arrive was Grimpen, who by chance had been passing through Peacock Junction when the swift-boat sang its summons. He was a large, rough-hewn man who resembled nothing so much as a nickel-iron asteroid garbed in colorful tunic and pantaloons. Yet he had remarkably soft and gentle lips and an easy way about him. His colleagues regarded him as “slow and ponderous,” although he preferred the term “methodical.” If Fir Li was a fleet wolfhound straining at the leash, Grimpen was more the St. Bernard: careful, helpful, resourceful, intelligent. Not the sort on whom to bet in a race—unless the race were one of endurance.

A few days later, Francine Thompson arrived from Wiedermeier’s Chit, where she had just resolved a string of serial murders by a man calling himself “the Delphic.” Breezy, and confident to the point of arrogance, she used the office-name of Bridget ban, and she strode the gangways of Hot Gates like the queen of High Tara. Her hair was red and her skin was gold and she was living proof that deadliness could decorate. She had a voice like the bursting sea—rushing and crashing and with just a taste of salt.

A week after that, Gwillgi passed through Sapphire Point on his way to the Lesser Hanse and, intercepting Fir Li’s broadcast, decided to lay over and consider the matter. The problem that awaited him on Hanower was important, but not urgent, and might already be settled by financial auditors before Gwillgi arrived with Plan B. In either case, the suspect would be brought to accounts. Gwillgi was a banty man sporting a thin moustache, and seemed somehow to be wound from razor wire. He did not grow hair so much as bristles, and his eyes were a deadly topaz in color.

Fir Li did not think that any others would appear soon enough to matter, and so he called a pack meeting shortly after Gwillgi’s arrival, sweetening the affair with a fine board of wines and fruits and dates and a main course featuring a roasted haunch of satin tiger, prepared after the fashion of Valency with a chutney of mangoes and chilies. The crew of Hot Gates gave the Hound’s quarters wide berth, for much of what transpired within was not for outsiders to know.

In theory, they were a band of brothers, anatomy notwithstanding, but neither competency nor collegiality can entirely overcome ambition and human nature. The four Hounds who gathered in Fir Li’s private suite after the meal respected one another and worked with one another, but they did not always like one another, and kept one eye focused always on their own advantage. They were reluctant to accept orders from a peer; so, Fir Li fell back on logic and reason.

Logic might have persuaded Bridget ban—she was the sort for whom a well-constructed narrative is worth a thousand detailed facts, and on occasion she was known to discard a fact or two to save the narrative; but Grimpen was a man unimpressed with theories. From any finite collection of facts, he was fond of saying, one may construct an infinite number of theories, and the probability approached zero that any one of them was true. As for Gwillgi, fact and theory alike meant nothing; the deed was all.

“Why don’t you go in yourself?” Gwillgi asked Fir Li. But the dark Hound waved his arm broadly, encompassing Hot Gates and her squadron beyond the hull, patrolling the exit ramps of Sapphire Point.

“I would. But I’m committed to this duty. And I’ve been across before. Some there might remember.”

“We all have duties,” Gwillgi replied, “save Grimpen, here. He seems at liberty.”

“We don’t even know,” rumbled the big man, “that your disappearing ships are more than a statistical anomaly.” Having arrived first, he had already reviewed the data.

“I showed you the analyses,” Fir Li protested. With his left hand, he crooked a finger and a junior Pup approached with a flagon of channel wine from Greatthorp. Fir Li held his cup out. Both Gwillgi and Bridget ban eyed the boy speculatively. Gwillgi ran a nail—it was very nearly a claw—along the lad’s forearm as he passed. Fir Li, seeing this, chuckled. “You won’t fluster him. I’ve taught him the falconer’s art.”

Topaz eyes caught the light. “You launch falcons aboard Hot Gates?”

Grimpen rumbled like an earthquake, signifying laughter. “He didn’t say that.” But turning to his host, he said, “You yourself admitted the conclusions were subject to an alpha risk of…”

“O! dear, large Grimpen,” said Bridget ban, who drank nothing but water. “Were the world an equation, we’d ha’e solved it ere now.”

“Nonetheless,” Fir Li insisted after an appreciative sip, “we’ve reason to suspect that ships crossing into the Confederacy disappear too often. Now we’ve intelligence that the Confederacy harbors the same suspicions about ships crossing into the League.”

“What of the second courier?” asked Grimpen. “I assume there was one.”

Fir Li shook his head. “Hanseatic Point saw nothing unusual. I haven’t heard from the farther crossings. If there was a second courier, he likely made the crossing as a crewman on a freighter, jumped ship once over here, slipped surveillance, and hijacked a small ship to use. I’ve sent out a request that any recent hijackings of personal yachts be reported to my office.”

“If your fish was sent in order to be caught and spill disinformation,” said Gwillgi, “why bother sending a second?”

“And why would they spread such disinformation?” Bridget ban asked. “I mean, that particular disinformation? Suppose we were to believe it. How does the Confederacy benefit?”

Gwillgi scratched his chin with his forefinger. “The ICC and the Chettinads and the rest grow spooked about crossing the Rift. Stop sending ships across. Fewer nosy strangers, hey?”

“Our trade ships may dock only at Gaphavn,” Grimpen pointed out, “and their movements are tightly controlled.”

Gwillgi struck the arm of his chair. “Then the Confederates are doing something at Gaphavn. Don’t want us to know!”

“Then they’ve only to abrogate the Treaty,” said Bridget ban. “They’d nae let our ships in aforetimes, and need no ruse to be keeping them out once more.”

“Blather,” said Grimpen. “It’s pointless to speculate on Confederate motives for doing something before we’re quite sure they’re doing it. Either Olafsson’s mission was genuine, or it was disinformation. Start from there and ask what facts you’d need to—”

Fir Li turned to his door, where stood Graceful Bintsaif, who was senior Pup now that Greystroke was on the scent. “Yes.”

Bintsaif bowed. “Your pardons, Cuin,” she said, and turning to Fir Li, “Cu, the commodore has asked for you. His pickets report the Cynthian fleet returning.”

Fir Li cocked his head. “And this interests me, how? Must I listen again as the Molnar mocks the Ardry and the rule of law?”

“Cu, the commodore said to tell you that they number only half as many ships.”

Fir Li drained his glass and placed it on the salver proffered by the junior Pup. “Now, that is interesting,” he told the other Hounds. “A pirate fleet going and coming is no great thing in these wretched times; but a fleet going and half a fleet coming—that has a story.”

Fire Control greeted Fir Li when he entered the command deck deep within Hot Gates by saying, “Now, can I take them? They’ve only ten corvettes, and each badly damaged.”

“Not yet, Fire Control. Let’s hear the story first.” He nodded to Commodore Wildbear, who had replaced Echeverria in the rotation. “Bring the alfvens to standby.”

“Cu?”

“Which word was unclear? Do it. Comm, compress this and squirt. Cuin, if you would, stand within the field of view. Thank you. Record. ‘Cynthian ships, this is ULS Hot Gates, Cu na Fir Li commanding. State your business.’ End.”

Several minutes went by as the message packet penciled out to the Silk Road exit. Overhead, Traffic Control displayed the positions of the ships as they crossed the high system to the Palisades Parkway. Red lights indicated the observed positions; green lights, the projected real positions, corrected for vector and Newtonian light-lag. Fir Li told Fire Control to show dead lines. “One for kinetic weapons; one for energy beams. Localize to ship-centered coordinates, by ship.”

Just in case. Fire Control grinned. Commodore Wildbear scowled. Technically, the commodore had operational control of the squadron, but Hot Gates was Fir Li’s personal property and he sometimes forgot the protocols, or pretended to.

When the reply came from the Cynthians, the Molnar put on a brave front. “Hey, doggy, you got yourself a reg’lar pack there. Just on my way home, now, me. Don’t want no trouble. You keep watching for Confederates, okay? And better watch that Silk Road exit, too—might be followed, me.”

“So, your victim proved too tough a nut!” Fir Li tried to show that he was trying not to smirk.

Lag-and-reply and: “New Eireann? Naw, they was pussies. Like the sages say: ‘The strong take what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.’ Was ambushed at Peacock Junction, Deceiver take ’em! Ever see a ship hit caltrops at high-v, you? Shredded my vanguard coming off the ramp. Took the damned Twister, after all the trouble we went through to fetch it.”

This time Fir Li did not try to hide the smirk. “The strong take what they can,” he answered philosophically. Gwillgi, behind him, began to laugh, but Fir Li waved him silent and awaited the Cynthian’s reply.

“Don’t be such a smart mouth. Fight anybody, me; and if I lose, I lose.” He actually struck his chest. “Gods decide. But sneakin’ ambush, that’s no fight. Hey, doggy, they come through the Road after us, they make recycle outta your punky squadron.”

And they would have the Twister. Fir Li pondered that for a moment before he formulated his next squirt. “Did they know about the weapon when they took it?”

“Weapon? What weapon?” The Molnar’s replies came faster as his ragged flotilla approached perihelion with Sapphire. “Oh! Naw, that Twister was just some old prehuman rock. The ICC factor on Cynthia was fulla crap.”

Fir Li relaxed, a movement undetectable to any but his colleagues and senior Pups. The idea of a new weapons system had worried him, but…Only an artifact. Valuable, to be sure, but only valuable.

Before he could respond, the Molnar added, “They musta had a spy in the New Eireann system what sent a swifty through the Road ahead of us, ’cause nobody else knew we even had it. They laid for us at Peacock, hijacked the loot, after we did all the work gettin’ it! They took a whole treasure ship, doggy. Matched our course, boarded, demanded the Twister.” A bitter, sly look came over the Molnar’s face. “Someday, I find those hijackers, me. Then we show them Cynthian justice.”

“Justice!”

“Yah, justice. That’s where the boss gives everyone what they deserve; an’ these hijackers deserve everything I’m thinking to give them.”

Fir Li was astonished at the man’s wink, as if he and Fir Li were partners complicit in the same enterprise. “And what of the Ardry’s justice?” he demanded. “Should he give out what everyone deserves?”

The Cynthian ships were accelerating toward the Palisades Parkway, approaching the dead line for kinetic weapons. Fire Control turned with an appeal on her face.

“He can try,” the Molnar told them. “A man has whatever power he can grab.”

Fir Li said, “I will take your advice.” He nodded to Fire Control, and the ships of the Sapphire Point squadron unleashed a timed barrage, each ship firing her kinetics so that all would arrive simultaneously on-target.

It was exquisite pleasure to watch the image of the Molnar khan Matsumo first puzzle over Fir Li’s comment, then a moment later react to his watch officer’s cry. “Oho! Doggy wants to bark,” and he ordered counter-battery fire.

The Cynthian fleet dispersed at high-v, adding jitter to their projected course. Targeting computers guessed at likely course alterations, compensated, and fired again even before new images had been received. Sensor images were seconds, or even minutes old, so Fir Li’s ships had to fire at where the targets would be, based on glimpses of where they had been. Only ULS Justiciar was close enough to see the Cynthian corvettes in “real time,” and flashes on the display showed where her weapons found the alfvens on two corvettes slow to maneuver. Crippled, the corvettes skated off onto the Newtonian flats at the system’s edge, unable to grab space and slow down.

A third Cynthian jittered too much and entered the Palisades at the wrong angle. A hoop of false color on the overhead screen highlighted the Cerenkov radiation that marked its disintegration. A fourth Cynthian encountered kinetics loosed earlier by ULS Victory. “Cu,” said the battle-space manager, “Justiciar has taken damage.” Fir Li nodded. Close enough for precision fire, she had been close enough to receive it. Grimpen leaned toward him to whisper.

“What can we do for Justiciar?”

Fir Li said, “Nothing. Once the dice are cast, they tumble as they will. No one manages a high-v battle space.”

Comm called out, “Cu!” and Fir Li saw the snarling face of the Molnar fill the screen. Behind him, his control room smoldered, alarums clanged, and men and women rushed to their tasks. “Now, doggy, you see how a man dies! Aye-yiii!” And with that cry, he cut communication. A minute later, Traffic announced that the Cynthian flagship had changed course.

And a moment more, the new course had been extrapolated. “He’s coming directly toward us, Cu. He means to ram.”

“So that is how a man dies,” murmured Bridget ban.

Gwillgi grinned. “You have to admire his style.”

“How long before he reaches our position?” Fir Li demanded.

“At that speed, he can’t turn on a dinar,” Traffic said. “He has to shed his tangential velocity. But once he’s normalized, no more than twelve hundred beats. No, he’s accelerating. Make that eight hundred beats.”

Wildbear ordered Hot Gates to shift station, but Fir Li countermanded the order. “Belay that,” he told the helmsman. Wildbear spun to confront his commander.

“Are you as mad as they say? We have to jitter. He’s got the gravity gauge on us.”

“Which means, Commodore,” Fir Li explained patiently, “that a small angular adjustment on his part will compensate for even a large shift by us. We must wait as long as we can before jittering.”

“But…the inertia! Hot Gates wants time to move herself. We have to start acceleration now!”

“Thank you, Commodore. I was utterly unaware of that. Tracking, how long before impact?”

“Seven hundred, Cu, if he continues to accelerate at the present rate.”

“Traffic, give me a deadline. Cuin,” he addressed his colleagues, “the Molnar may have the gravity gauge, but we have topology. We know his starting position and we know his intended final position; namely, right…here.” With his foot, he sketched an X on the deck. “Therefore, we know the sheaf of coordinates along which all his weapons must track. Shields, see to that. Kinetics will be coming in rather fast, and I’d rather they not swiss my ship.”

Traffic displayed the deadline. “If the Cynthian passes these coordinates,” he said, “we cannot move the ship in time.”

“Aye,” Fir Li answered with a fierce grin. “But if we shift much before he reaches that line, he can simply tap his helm and compensate.”

“An exquisite problem in geometry,” said Bridget ban. “I can see only one solution.”

“Have you ever watched a bullfight on Riftside Andlus?” Fir Li asked her. “There is a maneuver called—”

“A Veronica,” supplied Bridget ban. She stood with arms crossed and legs akimbo. Unlike Grimpen and Gwillgi, she had sought neither seat not handhold.

“You may want to strap in,” Fir Li advised her.

“For such a closing speed? Sure, the straps must be uncommon strong.”

Fir Li quirked a smile. “Weapons,” he said. “Fire caltrops. Give him something to think about.”

“At these speeds,” Grimpen commented, “thinking isn’t even in it.”

“Even if we swiss him,” Wildbear objected, “his ship’s mass will continue on the same trajectory.”

“Grapeshot off,” said Weapons. “But his mag fields are up. He’ll deflect most, and the ceramic ones will just glance off his glacis.”

“Did I ask for an opinion, Weapons? The Molnar may have the faith in his defenses that others place in the gods, but he cannot help being distracted for a moment.”

“A grossbeat,” said Tracking. “Approaching deadline.”

“Time flies,” said Gwillgi, “when you’re having fun.” Fir Li grinned but did not turn to him. The point was to distract and not be distracted.

“Power, set alfvens for two leagues.”

Wildbear reared up. “Alfvens? You are mad! We’re too close to the sun!”

“Commodore, you are relieved. Gwillgi, would you indulge me and take custody of Hideo Commodore Wildbear?” The small, wiry Hound did not move, but grinned at Wildbear. The grin was sufficient hold, for the commodore glimpsed his teeth.

“Incoming kinetics,” announced Counter-battery. “Engaged.” Hot Gates shuddered as the fields absorbed the impacts and slewed them around the ship. A thud high above the command deck signaled an airtight door closing.

“Breech on E-17,” said Damage Control. A ceramic striking at high-v had pierced the ship like a needle through butter. Muted chimes summoned the damage party to E-deck.

Fir Li said, “Power. At deadline, engage alfvens. Two-league jump, random vector outside the sheaf. Enter.”

“Entered,” said Power; and Ships rang the chimes that announced upcoming alfven yanks: short-long, short-long, over and over.

“If you knew more of Alfven Theory,” Fir Li heard Grimpen tell Bridget ban, “you’d not be so calm.” But he was answered with laughter like breakers on an empty strand.

The visuals had grown insensibly coincident with real-time positions. The “grab hold” chimes sounded and the alfvens snatched whole handfuls of the threaded fabric of space and yanked Hot Gates violently aside. Too late to compensate, the Molnar’s corvette was past almost before they saw her coming and she dopplered downward into Sapphire Point itself.

“At that velocity,” Traffic observed, “she can’t vector aside before…”

The command deck fell silent, watching while the Cynthian ship fell toward the sun. She tried to maneuver, but the gravitational field of the blue giant pulled her insistently. For a time, it seemed as if she might make it anyway, perhaps only graze the photosphere. But then something happened—it was not clear what—and all attempts at maneuver ceased.

It was a long fall. Even at near-light speed, it was two more watches before the Cynthian ship had been finally engulfed by the blue giant, and another two before they saw it happen on the screens.

Long before then, Fir Li had left the control center, giving command back to Commodore Wildbear. “I’ll expect damage reports for ship and squadron, and an accounting of the Cynthian ships as well. At least three succeeded in making the Palisades.” As usual, he had been watching everything.

The commodore could not conceal his surprise at being returned to command, but before he could speak, Fir Li had spun on his heel. “Graceful Bintsaif.”

“Yes, Cu.”

“You know what to do.”

“Yes, Cu.”

And with that, Fir Li and his colleagues left the command deck, Gwillgi sparing one last smile for the commodore.

“What does Graceful Bintsaif know what to do?” Grimpen asked when they had returned to Fir Li’s quarters.

Gwillgi answered in Fir Li’s place. “Why, to take command of the ship should Wildbear show further weakness.”

“He was only showing caution,” Bridget ban said.

Gwillgi’s laugh was like broken glass. “That’s what I said.”

Grimpen poured himself a tumbler of channel wine from the pitcher on the sideboard and drank it empty before pouring another. “A hard fate,” he said. The others knew he meant the Molnar and they all glanced at the clock to see how much longer before Shree Newton accepted this new sacrifice.

“He loved it,” said Bridget ban, “the Molnar did; or didn’t you notice. When he turned to give orders to his watch, I saw that he was hugely aroused.”

“He certainly tried to fuck us good,” said Gwillgi.

“And it was a madman’s chance,” said Fir Li, who had entered his quarters last of all. “That’s why I knew he would try it, or something like it.”

“Yes,” said Gwillgi. “I noticed. You brought the alfvens online as soon as you entered the command center. You meant to destroy him from the first.” Gwillgi approved, of course.

“And what you did wasn’t mad?” suggested Grimpen. “There’s a reason no one engages the alfvens this far down the gravity well. Can’t you smell the burnt insulation, the tang of overheated ceramics and melted metals and plastics? Hot Gates isn’t going anywhere soon.”

Fir Li shrugged. “I hadn’t planned on going anywhere. Damage Control is at work. If needs be, Justiciar can order materials and components. I’m sending her off-station for yard repairs, so she can carry any requisitions with her. But I hope our own stores and shops can repair things.”

Gwillgi had drifted to the viewscreen and adjusted the coordinates until Sapphire Point seethed and churned in the center. “I wonder,” he said. “At the speed he was going, he could be out the other side of the star before the temperature and pressure could matter.”

Grimpen shook his massive head. “A star may be nothing but hot gases, but at those speeds, it would be like hitting a stone wall.”

“A stone wall,” murmured Bridget ban, looking upon some childhood memory. With a part of his attention, Fir Li caught that momentary lightening of her features, and would have thought nothing of it, except that she closed up immediately after.

“Radiation will have cooked him long before,” Gwillgi said.

“Well,” said Grimpen, placing his drink on the sideboard. “I’m off to the Old Planets.”

Gwillgi turned from the viewscreen and cocked an eyebrow. “There, you think?”

The man-mountain shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“’Tis tae Peacock Junction, I’ll be going,” Bridget ban announced. “Someone thought enough of this Twister to be taking it from the Molnar; and the Molnar came all the way from the Hadramoo to fetch it off New Eireann. Perhaps I can catch the scent of this black fleet there.”

“Yes,” said Grimpen. “All the way from the Hadramoo.”

He knows something, Bridget ban concluded. Or he thinks he does. But we’ll see who gets to the root sooner. She gave Grimpen a pleasant smile and wondered if the other Hounds even knew the tale of King Stonewall’s Twisting Scepter. They had been raised in the interior, not on Die Bold, as she had been; and stories about “the Folk of Sand and Iron” did not circulate that far into the Spiral Arm.

Fir Li turned to Gwillgi. “Then, that leaves only you to cross into the CCW and learn about the lost ships.”

“Sorry, Dark-hound,” replied the other. “Business on Hanower. Maybe, after. No rush. Ships’ve been disappearing for years, you say.”

Seeing that his plans had come to nothing, Fir Li sighed. “Perhaps Greystroke will learn what I need.”

Bridget ban realized that Fir Li did not understand the possibilities of the Scepter. He was too focused on the Rift, on the long-awaited Confederate invasion, on the mysterious disappearances. The Twister had in effect passed directly across his field of vision without once registering on his consciousness. All the better. There would be much honor at the Ardry’s court to whomever brought the Scepter in. Better that it be Bridget ban than Fir Li.

If one fleet had thought to seize the Scepter, and another fought to take it, it might be something worth the having. If nothing else, it would be a quest out of the ordinary. And if she found the Scepter, and if she could take it from those who had wrecked the Molnar’s fleet, and if it had the powers that legend gave it, possession of it might give the Ardry at last the power to rule. That was a lot of “ifs,” but she was a Hound.

Still, even should the Stonewall Scepter prove as inert as the Ourobouros Circuit, the Ardry would at least have another bauble for the Royal League Museum on High Tara. Tully O’Connor was an art lover, and fancied himself an amateur archaeologist. He would be pleased with whoever brought him such an artifact, and favor at court was not something to be shunned.

But it bothered her that she didn’t know what Grimpen knew, or thought he knew.