Crystal Dragon (8 page)

"First aid kit," she said, huskily, and opened her eyes to meet Jela's calm gaze. "We put you in the first aid kit," she amplified when he didn't do anything more than lift a lazy black eyebrow. "Get you put back to spec, then you take what time you need to plan out your campaign."

"Pilot—"

She raised a hand. "I know you're not friends with the 'kit, but own it has its uses. You saw what it did for Dulsey—Deeps! You saw what it did for me. You climb yourself in and I'll set us a cour—"

"
Cantra
." He didn't raise his voice, but there was still enough snap in it to cut her off in mid-word. She felt the muscles of her face contract and wondered wildly what she'd been showing him.

Having stopped her, Jela didn't seem in any hurry to fill up the cabin with words of his own. He just stood there, head to a side, looking at her—and if truth be told there was something odd going on in his face, too.

He moved then, one careful step, keeping his hands where she could see them. Motionless, she watched him take her hand between both of his broad palms.

His skin was warm, his hands gentle. He craned his head back, black eyes searching her face, his absolutely open.

"Remember when the first aid kit didn't work?" he asked, like they were discussing what cargo was best to take on. "Garen had to take you to the Uncle for a receptor flush because the first aid kit didn't cure the edlin. That was why, wasn't it? Because all the 'kit could do was put you back to spec."

Pain. Thoughts staggering through reeking blood-red mists...then coolness as reason returned in the friendly dark. The lid rose, she rolled out—and collapsed to the floor, screaming as the pain took her again...

"And spec included the gimmicked receptors," she said, suddenly and deeply weary. "Right."

"Right," Jela said softly. "It's in the design, Cantra. M Series soldiers are decommissioned at forty-five years." He smiled, sudden and genuine. "Safer that way."

"Safer..." she whispered and her free hand moved on its own, gripping his shoulder hard.

"Rool Tiazan," she said after a moment. "He asked how you'd choose to die."

"He did," Jela said briskly. "And if the tree and me are to liberate the good scholar's math, publish it wholesale,
and
die in battle, I'd better not take too many naps."

She smiled slightly, and stepped back, taking her hand off his shoulder, slipping the other from between his palms. He watched her out of calm black eyes.

"If it ain't your intention to die on Landomist Port," she said, turning to shut the locker door, "and see the tree broken and burned before you do, you'll employ that agent to work your will, like I said you should."

Behind her, she heard Jela sigh.

"It has to be a frontal attack," he said patiently. "I don't know how to employ the sort of agent you advise. And I don't have time to train him."

Face to the locker, she closed her eyes, hearing again the tiny lady's sharp voice listing out the terms of Jela's service:

You, the pilot and the ssussdriad will proceed to the world Landomist...

Not her fight, dammit. She'd not sworn to any such madness.

Pay your debts, baby
, Garen ghost-whispered from the gone-away past.
There ain't no living with yourself, if you don't.

Deeps knew, she wouldn't be living at all, were it not for Jela—and, truth told full, the tree, as well.

Cantra sighed, very softly, opened her eyes and turned to face him.

"Her," she said, and met his eyes firm, giving a good imitation of woman with a sensible decision on deck. "I can get you in."

THE KLAXON SHRIEKED, and Tor An's body responded before he was fully awake, snapping forward to the board—and snatched back by the webbing as the ship dropped out of transition with a shudder and a sob.

He'd webbed into the chair before allowing himself to nod off—prudent for a pilot running solo, even in relatively pirate-free space.

Prudence had saved him a bad knock—and another when the ship twisted again, as if protesting its sudden change of state.

By then, he was well awake, and by exerting steady pressure against the restraints managed to gain his board, and get a closer look at the screens.

The board was locked and live—standard for transition—and the main screen displayed a dense, unfamiliar starfield. Across the center of the display ran a bright blue legend:
Transition aborted. Target coordinates unavailable.

Tor An blinked, reached to the board, engaged shields, called up the last-filed transition string, and sat frowning at the cheery yellow coordinates that described the location of home. Feeling a fool, he activated the library, called for the Ringstars, and did a digit-by-digit comparison between the library's coord set and those displayed in the nav screen.

The numbers matched, which ought to have, he thought, made him feel better. After all, he
hadn't
made a fumble-fingered entry error, or misremembered the coord set he'd been able to recite almost before he could pronounce his name.

On the other hand, a ship sent into transition defined by a correct set of target coordinates ought not to exit transition until the conditions described by the coordinates were met.

"Unless," Tor An said to the empty tower, "the navigation brain has dead sectors, or a ship self-check determines a dangerous condition. Or pirates force you out early."

He glared at the screens, noting the lack of pirates. He slapped up the logs, but found no dangerous condition listed. Dead sectors in the nav brain—he sighed. There was only one way to determine if that were the case.

Leaning to the board again, he set up a suite of diagnostics, punching the start key with perhaps a bit more force than was absolutely necessary. The board lights flickered; the screens blanked momentarily, then lit again, displaying the testing sequence and estimated time until completion.

Tor An released the webbing and stood. There was one more thing that might usefully be done—and, considering the age of his ship,
ought
to be done. If the transvective stabilizers had developed a wobble, the ship might have spontaneously dropped out of transition. He rather thought that such an event would have been noted in the log, but it
was
an old ship, with quirks and crotchets, and certain sporadic incompatibilities between ship's core and the logging function were a known glitch of its class.

Two of his strides and he was across the tiny tower. He opened a storage hatch, pulled out a tool belt and slung it around his waist, snapping it as he headed for the door.

SOME WHILE LATER, he was back in the pilot's chair, gnawing on a high-calorie bar and scrolling through the diagnostic reports, not as pleased as he might be by the unbroken lines of "normal function." At the end of the file, he sat back, the bar forgotten in his hand.

The stabilizers had checked out. The synchronization unit—which he knew for a glitchy, temperamental piece of work—had tested perfectly sound. Everything that could be tested, had tested normal, except for one thing.

Normally functioning ships do not spontaneously fall out of transition and report the—correctly entered!—target coordinates as "unavailable."

"Well," he said aloud, "it's obviously a fabric-of-space problem."

"Fabric-of-space problem" was Alkia in-clan for "a thing which has happened, but which cannot be explained." There being a limited number of such events in life, the phrase was a joke—or a sarcastic jibe from an elder to a junior suspected of being too lazy to do a thorough check.

But he
had
done a thorough check, for all the good he'd gained.

"Check again," he told himself, a trifle impatiently, "or trust the data."

Chewing his lower lip, he glanced down, frowned at the bar in his hand and tossed it into the recycling drawer. Then, he engaged the webbing, brought the board up, woke the nav brain and fed it the coordinates for the Ringstars.

"Enough nonsense," he said to his ship. "Let us go home."

He initiated transition.

CANTRA POURED THE LAST of the tea into her mug, started a new pot brewing, and wandered back into that part of the lodgings which was in the fond thought of the landlord the parlor. Right now, it was a workroom, with twin tables piled high with the building blocks of a dozen or more parallel-running projects, hers and his.

Her projects were in holding orbit at the moment, waiting an all-clear from the portmaster, played for this once-only showing by M. Jela, who was emoting equal parts stubborn and grim as he sat hunched over his toys. A warmer bowl containing dinner—or might-be breakfast—sat at his elbow, the noodles dry, the tasty and nutritious sauce long baked off. He'd been paying sporadic attention to his mug, so she'd set herself to keeping it full with hot, sweet, and fresh.

Cantra sipped tea and sighed. The man did, she conceded, have a point. If the info could be pinched from afar, then it was beyond foolish to risk the ship's company by going in after it. It happened she believed—- based on past study, say—that the Towers of Landomist kept their brains well-shielded, and Osabei moreso than most. She'd given him everything she knew on the subject, which was, once she'd put her memory to it, not inconsiderable. And she'd pointed out the logic behind imprisoning Liad dea'Syl in Osabei, on the slim chance he hadn't figured it out for himself.

Still, he'd wanted to check it for himself, and so he was—using an interesting combination of military grade and Dark Market gizmos. Cantra supposed she ought to be grateful for his caution. Herself, she was finding the inexorable passage of time an unwelcome irritant.

She sat down in the chair she'd lately been calling home, and put her feet up on one of the rare clear spots of her table. Crossing her ankles, she glanced at the tree, sitting in a fancy artwork pot over in the corner, under the special light Jela'd rigged for it—and then at the clock. Not long now. She sipped her tea and watched Jela, which was a deal more scenic than staring at the wall, and waited.

Her tea was gone by the time the clock finally gave out with its tootling little on-the-local-hour song, and Jela sighed, rolled his shoulders and leaned back in his chair, his eyes lingering on the spyware.

"Luck?" she asked, though by the look of it, learning-by-doing had only gained what she'd told him in the first place.

He sighed again, and finally met her eyes, his tired and tending toward bleak.

"We go in," he said.

HE RAISED TELMAIR.

He raised Kant.

He raised Porshel and Braz, Jiniwerk, and Oryel.

He dug deep into the library, and unrolled star charts across the tower floor, weighting the corners with spanners. When he had identified the coordinates for a sphere of six waystops inside the influence of the Ringstars, he fed those into the nav-brain, webbed himself into the pilot's chair, initiated transition, and waited, his face tight, his back rigid.

The ship accepted its office. Tor An sighed, his muscles melting toward relief—

And
Light Wing
twisted, klaxons blaring as she fell into real space, alarms lighting the board, and across the main screen, the bright blue legend:

Transition aborted. Target coordinates unavailable.

He was a conscientious boy, and he had been taught well. Ignoring the ice in his belly, the chilly sweat on his face, he re-checked the charts, made sure of his numbers, and initiated transition for the second time.

And for a second time, his ship transitioned, and almost immediately returned to normal space.

Transition aborted. Target coordinates unavailable.

He shut down the board, made sure of his shields, deliberately unwebbed and stood. It had, he told himself, been some time since he had eaten—how long a time, he was not prepared to say with any certainty, save that he had been awake for longer.

"Pilot error," he said to the empty tower. "I am taking myself off-duty for a meal, a shower and a nap. Barring ship's need, I will return in five ship hours and perform the exercise again from the top."

He was a lad of his word, and had been raised to know the value of discipline. There was no ship's emergency to disturb him and he returned to the tower visibly refreshed, had there been any to see, in just under five ship hours.

Once at his station, he again carefully examined the star maps, acquiring six coordinate strings defining a sphere of ports that lay within the boundary space of the Ringstars.

Rising, he went to his chair, webbed in, entered the coords, double-checked them—and initiated transition.

Light Wing
leapt, stuttered—fell.

Transition aborted,
read the message across the main screen.
Target coordinates unavailable.

CANTRA WOKE AS SHE'D set herself to do, since it was important to be up and well about her business before Jela, who never that she'd noticed slept more than four hours together, did the same.

Despite that the "up" side of the equation was as crucial as the "awake," she stayed a bit longer just where she was, curled slightly on her left side, her back snuggled against Jela's wide and reassuring chest. His arm was draped companionably over her waist, her hand tucked into the relaxed curl of his fist. He slept quiet, did Jela, and solid, which the Deeps knew he had a right. The work he'd put in over the last few days, cutting his four hours of sleep down to two, or, in some cases, so she suspected, none—it was a wonder he could stand, much less share a long and satisfying pleasure as they'd just enjoyed. The last of too few.

She sighed softly, and shifted, slow and languorous, a well-satisfied woman readjusting position in her sleep. Jela shifted in turn, reflexively withdrawing his arm. Freed, she waited three heartbeats, listening to his quiet, unhurried breathing. When she was certain he hadn't woke, she eased out of bed and ghosted away.

THE LIGHT IN the main room was hard and non-adjustable; the work tables tidier than they'd been in a while. Jela's held a couple sets of data tiles, frames, and some bits of esoteric tinyware the particulars of which she hadn't troubled to ask after. Her table—was clear, excepting a notebook and a pen. Picking up the pen, she wrote, briefly, tore the sheet out of the book and placed it prominently at Jela's table. Her last instruction to her co-pilot. She wished that it could have been something more easeful—but there wasn't any use lying to Jela. Not now.