Dragonsdawn (29 page)

Sallah did as she was told, though her head ached and her eyes blurred repeatedly. She could not suppress her surprise at the amount of fuel in the
Mariposa’s
tanks.

“Yes, someone was holding back on it. You?” There was a jerk on the line.

“Kenjo, I suspect,” Sallah replied coolly, managing to suppress a cry. She was determined not to give Avril any satisfaction.

“Fussy Fusi? Yes, that computes. I thought he’d given up all too tamely! Where did he hide it?” The line tightened. Sallah had to bite hard on her lip against a sob.

“Probably at his stake. It’s back of beyond. No one goes there. He could hide anything there.”

Avril snorted and remained silent. Sallah made herself breathe deeply, forcing more adrenaline into her system to combat pain, fatigue, and fear.

“All right, compute me a course to . . .” Avril consulted a notebook. “Here.”

Only because Sallah already knew the coordinates did she recognize the numbers. Avril wished to go to the system nearest them, a system that, though uninhabited, was closer to the populated sectors of space. The course would stretch the
Mariposa
to the end of available fuel, even if Avril also drained the
Yoko
’s tanks. It gave Sallah no consolation to think that the little ship might drift for centuries with Avril safe and composed in deep sleep. Unless, just maybe, Ongola had tampered with the sleep tanks, too. She liked that idea. But she knew Ongola too well to presume that kind of foresight.

Unfortunately, the Avrils of the galaxy could make themselves at home in any time and culture. So if Avril went into deep sleep, eventually someone, or something, would rescue her and the
Mariposa.
Sallah did not need to see them to know that Avril had several fortunes’ worth of gemstones and precious metals aboard the
Mariposa.
There had never been any doubt in anyone’s mind why Avril had chosen Big Island as her stake, but no one had cared. But then, no one would have imagined that she would be mad enough to attempt to leave Pern, even with Threadfall threatening the planet.

Wondering why Avril, who was an astrogator, after all, had not been able to complete laying in such a simple course, Sallah did as she was ordered. She had more experience than Avril did with the
Mariposa
’s drive board. But the program was not accepted.
ERROR
259
AT LINE
57465534511 was the message.

Avril jerked hard on the line, and Sallah hissed against the burning, crippling pain in her foot.

“Try again. There’s more than one way of entering a course.”

Sallah obeyed. “I’ll have to go around the existing parameters.”

“Reset the entire effing thing but plot that course,” Avril told her.

As Sallah began the more laborious deviation into the command center of the gig’s course computer, she was aware that Avril had picked up a long narrow cylinder from the rack by her helmet. She fiddled with it, humming tunelessly under her breath, seemingly thoroughly delighted with herself.

When Sallah finally tapped the “return” tab, she became aware of Avril’s intense interest in the flickering console. She chanced a look at what the woman had been fondling. It was a homemade capsule. Not a homer—they were thicker and longer—but something more like the standard beacon. Suddenly she clearly saw Avril’s plan.

Avril would take the
Mariposa
as far away from the Rukbat system as possible and then direct the distress beacon toward shipping lanes. Every planetary system involved with the Federated Sentient Planets, and some life-forms who were not, traced distress beacons to origin. The devices, automatically released when a ship was destroyed, were often traced by those who wished to turn whatever profit they could on the flotsam.

Avril’s plan was not as insane as it seemed. Sallah felt certain that Stev Kimmer had intended to take the trip with her, to be rescued by the distress beacon he had made for her.

Words flashed on the screen.
NO ACCESS WITHOUT STANDARD FCP/
120
/GM.

“Fuck it! That’s all I could get out of it. Try again, Telgar.” Avril pressed Sallah’s foot against the base of the console module, increasing the pain to the point where Sallah felt herself losing consciousness. Avril viciously pinched her left breast. “You don’t pass out on me, Telgar!”

“Look,” Sallah said, her voice rather more shaken than she liked, “I’ve tried twice, you’ve tried. I’ve tried the fail-safe I was taught. Someone anticipated you, Bitra. Open up this panel and I’ll tell you if we’ve been wasting effort.” She was trembling not only with pain but with the effort not to relieve her bladder. But she did not dare to ask even that favor.

Swearing, her face livid with frustration and rage, Avril deftly removed the panel, kicking the console in her frenzy. Sallah leaned as far away as her bonds permitted, hoping to escape any stray blows.

“How did they do it? What did they take, Telgar, or I’ll start carving you up.” Avril flattened Sallah’s left hand over the exposed chips, and her knife blade cut through the little finger to the bone. Pain and shock lanced through Sallah’s body. “You don’t need this one at all!”

“Blood hangs in the air just like vomit and urine, Bitra. And if you don’t stop, you’ll have both in free-fall.”

They locked eyes in a contest of wills.

“What . . . did . . . they . . . remove?” With each word Avril sawed against the little finger. Sallah screamed. It felt good to scream, and she knew that it would complete the picture of her in Avril’s mind: soft. Sallah had never felt harder in her life.

“Guidance. They removed the guidance chip. You can’t go anywhere.”

The blade left her finger, and Sallah stared in fascination at the drops of blood that formed and floated. The contemplation took her mind off Avril’s ranting until the woman snagged her shoulder.

“Are all the spare parts on the planet? Did they strip everything from the
Yoko
?”

Sallah forced her attention away from the blood and the pain, clamping down on all but the important consideration: how to thwart Avril without seeming to. “I’d say that there would be guidance chips left in the main board that could be substituted.”

“There’d better be.” Avril slipped the knife through the cord that bound Sallah to the pilot’s seat. “Okay. We suit up and head for the bridge.”

“Not before I go to the head, Avril,” Sallah replied. She nodded at her hand. “And attend to this. You don’t want blood on the chips, do you.” She let herself scream with the pain of the jerk to her foot. She felt she had handled her submission well. Avril would have suspected a more immediate capitulation. “And another boot.”

Finally Sallah could spare a dispassionate look at her foot. Half her heel was missing, and a puddle of blood rocked slowly back and forth, moved by the agitation of Avril’s kicks.

“Wait!” Avril had also noticed the blood. She spun away to the lockers by the hatch and came back with a space suit and a dirty cloth. “There! Strip!”

Sallah tied up her finger with the least soiled strip of cloth and used the rest to bind her foot. It hurt badly, and she could feel that fragments of her work boot had been jammed into the flesh. She was allowed the use of the head, while Avril watched and made snide cracks about maternal changes in a woman’s body. Sallah pretended to be more humiliated than she actually felt. It made Avril feel so superior. The higher the summit, the harder the fall, Sallah thought grimly. She struggled into the space suit.

“She’s left the gig, Admiral,” Ezra said suddenly into the tense silence in the crowded interface chamber. Tarvi had been called in. Silent tears streamed down his face. “She’s passed the sensors at the docking area. No,” he corrected himself, “two bodies have passed the sensors.” Tarvi let out a ragged sob but said nothing.

Bit by bit, the pieces had been put together to solve the puzzle of Sallah’s disappearance and Avril Bitra’s reappearance.

A technician, working on a remount job on the sled nearest Sallah’s, remembered seeing her leave her task and wander toward the scrap pile at the edge of the grid. He had also noticed Kenjo and Ongola walking to the
Mariposa.
He had not seen anyone else in that vicinity. Shortly afterward he had seen the
Mariposa
lift off.

Once someone thought to look for it, the sled Avril had used was easily spotted. It carried none of the modifications that all other Pernese sleds bore; it had been left at the edge of the grid, among others that had been called in for servicing. Stev Kimmer was called in to identify it. She had removed every trace of her occupancy, although Stev pointed to scrape marks that were new to him. He also kept his personal comments about his erstwhile partner to himself, though his expression had been sufficiently grim for Paul and Emily to suspect that he had been double-crossed. For one moment he had hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he had answered every question they asked him.

“She won’t get anywhere,” Emily said, firmly striving for optimism.

“No, she won’t.” Paul looked at the guidance cartridge, not daring to glance in Tarvi’s direction.

“Couldn’t she replace it from similar chips on the bridge?” Tarvi asked, his face an odd shade, his lips dry, and his liquid eyes tormented.

“Not the right size,” Ezra said, his expression infinitely sad. “The
Mariposa
was more modern, used smaller, more sophisticated crystals.”

“Besides,” Paul added heavily, “the chip she really needs is the one Ongola replaced with a blank. Oh, she can probably set a course and it will appear to be accepted. The ship will reverse out of the dock, but the moment she touches the firing pin, it’ll just go straight ahead.”

“But Sallah!” Tarvi demanded in an anguished voice. “What will happen to my wife?”

Sallah waited until Avril had reversed the
Mariposa
from the dock, let it drift away from the
Yokohama
’s bulk, and ignited the
Mariposa
’s tailflame before she operated the comm unit. Avril had done as much damage to the circuitry in the bridge console as she could, but she had forgotten the override at the admiral’s position. As soon as she left the bridge, Sallah accessed it.

“
Yokohama
to Landing. Come in, Ezra. You must be there!”

“Keroon here, Telgar! What’s your position?”

“Sitting,” Sallah said.

“Goddamn it, Telgar, don’t be facetious at a time like this,” Ezra cried.

“Sorry, sir,” Sallah said. “I don’t have visuals.” That was a lie, but she did not wish anyone to see her condition. “I’m accessing the probe garage. There is no damage report for that area. You’ve three probes left. How shall I program them?”

“Hellfire, girl, don’t talk about probes now! How’re we going to get you down?”

“I don’t think you are, sir,” she said cheerfully. “Tarvi?”

“Sal-lah!” The two syllables were said in a tone that brought her heart to her mouth and tears to her eyes. Why had he never spoken her name that way before? Did it mean the longawaited avowal of his love? The anguish in his voice evoked a spirit tortured and distressed.

“Tarvi, my love.” She kept her voice level though her throat kept closing. “Tarvi, who’s with you there?”

“Paul, Emily, Ezra,” he replied in broken tones. “Sallah! You must return!”

“On the wings of a prayer? No. Go to Cara! Get out of the room. I’ve got some business to do, Pern business. Paul, make him leave. I can’t think if I know he’s listening.”

“Sallah!” Her name echoed and reechoed in her ears.

“Okay, Ezra, tell me where you want them.”

There was a choking, throat-clearing noise. “I want one to go to the body of the cometary, the second to circumnavigate.” Ezra cleared his throat again. “I want the other to follow the spiral curve of that nebulosity. If the big scope is operable, I’d like bridge readings all along that damned thing. We can’t track it with the telescope we have here—not powerful enough for the definition we need. Never thought we’d need the big one, so we didn’t dismantle it.” He was maundering, Sallah thought affectionately, to get himself under control. Did she hear someone crying through that conversation? Surely Governor Boll or the admiral would have been kind enough to get Tarvi out of the room.

Then she needed to concentrate on the information Ezra was giving her to encode the duties and destinations of the individual probes.

“Probes away, sir,” she said, remembering the last time she had given that response. She saw Pern on the big screen; she had never thought that she would again see from space the world she had come to know as her home. “Now I’m sending some data for Dieter to decipher. Avril said she’d killed both Ongola and Kenjo. Has she?”

“Kenjo, yes. Ongola will pull through.”

“Old soldiers don’t die easy. Look, Ezra, what I’m sending for Dieter are some notations I made on available fuel. Ongola will know what I mean. And I’ve set down Avril’s course. She went off in the right direction, but I saw a very odd-looking crystal in that guidance system, one I never saw on the
Mariposa
when I was driving her. Am I right? She won’t go anywhere?”

“Once Bitra hits the engine button, she goes in a straight line.”

“Very good,” Sallah said with a feeling of immense satisfaction. “The straight and narrow for our dear departed friend. Now, I’m activating the big scope. I’ll program it to report through the interface to you. All right?”

“Give me the readings yourself, Miss Telgar,” Ezra ordered gruffly.

“I don’t think so, Captain,” she said, glad to rely on the impersonal address. She visualized Ezra Keroon’s thin frame hunched over the interface. “I don’t have that much time. Only the oxygen in my tanks. They were full when Avril let me put them on, but she told me she was switching off the bridge’s independent system. I have no reason to doubt her. That’s another reason why I’m switching the scope’s readings to you. Space gloves are good, but they don’t allow for fine tunings. I just about managed some repairs to the mess Avril made on the console. Jury rig at least, so . . . when someone gets a chance to get up here, most everything will work.”