Plan B (15 page)

The field was silent, awaiting the captain's next order. Val Con closed his eyes, recalling the Yxtrang landing.

He and Miri had been running to warn the Erob when the flight of attack craft circling overhead drove them to cover. The attackers dove toward the airfield, which sustained several passes before ter'Meulen's plane had risen in challenge. By then, the biggest roar in the sky had been the approach of the troop and transport ship.

Stupidly, the Yxtrang had attempted to take
Fosterling
out with a strafing run. The awesome fall of wreckage from the sky had been the result of that error—and the local keep's salvation.

Then came thunder from the sky and thunder from the ground as
Fosterling
replied to an attack from a space-based enemy. Valiant vessel—and all, eventually for naught. His ship was gone. Clonak ter'Meulen's heir was gone. The remnant of Erob's air fleet was gone. And he, a pilot of Korval, was grounded, charged with training children in the arts of death.

"Heh, go!" Miri commanded and the field went from absolute stillness to frenzied motion. Several pairs did absolutely the wrong thing. Miri headed for Trianna and Ilvin, as Val Con cut off An Der's charge with a sharp "Hold!"

"An overhead approach is acceptable for machete or broadsword," he told the boy's bruised blue eyes. "It is an inefficient technique for survival blade, in that it leaves the attacker vulnerable to a fighter with longer reach. Given the likelihood that the opponent you may eventually face with this blade will be considerably larger than you, the proper thrust is low, to surprise and injure, while making of yourself the smallest possible target. Then, an upthrust to chest or throat—thus." He demonstrated the sequence against an imaginary giant, reversed the blade and stepped aside. "The drill, if you please. Use your brain; terror wins no battles."

The boy took the weapon, bowed as student to honored instructor, and again faced his partner. Val Con watched them execute a far more reasoned drill and then moved down-line, pausing as necessary to correct, demonstrate, encourage.

"Heh, up!" The command rang out and all movement stopped.

"Drill done!" Miri called. "Return knives to Kol Vus. All at liberty until mess-call."

Val Con felt his shoulders sag in relief. It was amazingly tiring, this training of children and the Housebound. He began to walk toward Miri, and saw Emrith Tiazan and Win Den tel'Vosti bearing down on her from the opposite edge of the field.

"Scout!" The big voice bellowed from behind, booming with excitement. Val Con ground his teeth and kept walking; he had no wish to deal with Jason Carmody at this instant.

"Hey, Scout!" Jason insisted. "Over here, double-time! Got something to show you! Number one priority!"

That was final, then. Val Con sighed. A commander's priority outweighed any desire a man might have to protect his lady from the stresses of dealing with her kin.

He turned, and very nearly stared.

Jase grinned and dragged a sleeve across his forehead, leaving a streak of grime. His well-kept ponytail was in disarray, fine golden hairs pulled loose from the ribbon and standing out from his big head like an aura. His leathers were muddy and scuffed; there was a purpling bruise on one tan cheek, just above the beard-line; and his wide azure eyes were full of demonic glee.

"Look a sight, I'll wager," he said cheerfully. "Wasn't time to find my ball dress, though. This is hot, my son—got somebody you need to talk to!"

Val Con's heart stuttered.
Shan
? he thought, then nearly laughed.

Yes
, he told himself,
very likely. As if Shan is so lacking in wits he'd endanger his ship and the a'nadelm's life by running an Yxtrang blockade.

"You there, Scout?" Jason's eyes were sharp on him.

Val Con raised an eyebrow. "I am here, Commander. The question is: Where is this someone I must talk to?"

"Icehouse." The grin cracked free again, wild with pride. "Man, wait'll you—Hey, Captain Redhead!"

"Jase," Miri's voice was quiet, and a little husky from shouting practice commands. She smiled at Val Con and slid a comfortable arm around his waist.

"They're lookin' good out there, darlin'. When you figure on turning 'em loose to whip ass?"

Miri tipped her head and Val Con felt a sharpening in his own psyche, as if he was engaged in weighing values he recognized on some level past mere thought.

"Can take some heat, if you got it to share," Miri was telling Jason, calmly. "Ain't up to a pressure-cooker, but I figure to hold our own in a spat."

"Might have something to share, at that. Depends on what the Scout can get out of—"

"And what," demanded Emrith Tiazan arriving on Win Den tel'Vosti's arm, "is of such importance that Captain Robertson must need turn her back on me and walk away?"

There was an instant's silence.

"You're top brass, Jase," Miri muttered, and the big man started slightly before he bowed to the delm.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said, schooling his big voice to a polite boom. "I need the Scout and Captain Robertson to step along with me, Priority One."

tel'Vosti grinned, but Emrith Tiazan only glared, letting the silence stretch until it became a danger even Jason felt. Val Con shifted slightly, drawing the big man's eyes.

"It is possible," he murmured, "that Delm Erob will wish to survey this top priority, as well."

Jason looked doubtful, but produced another bow on the delm's behalf. "I'd be happy to have your assistance, ma'am—and General tel'Vosti's, too."

Erob inclined her head, her arm still twined with tel'Vosti's.

"Lead on, Commander," she ordered. "We are delighted to lend our—assistance."

Designed to withstand the rigors of quick-freeze, the vacuum of freeze-drying and, coincidentally, the detonation of a small bomb, Erob's back-up freeze-plant made an admirable prison. The corporal on guard at the door offered the information that Doc Tien was still inside, guard-crew with her, all according to the commander's order.

Jason nodded and pointed to the monitor. "Take a look," he said. "It's the best I can tell you."

It was difficult to see anything but the size of the prisoner, with the medic and the guards all around. Still, Val Con felt his pulse quicken even as Miri turned to stare up at Jason.

"What'd you do?" she demanded. "Crack an Yxtrang across the head?"

He grinned. "Damned near broke my carbine. That brother's head is
hard
."

"Yxtrang?" tel'Vosti squinted at the monitor. "You captured an Yxtrang? Alive? My dear Commander! You bring us hope."

Erob turned her head stiffly.

"Hope?" she snapped. She glared at Jason, for all the worlds like a strike-falcon baiting a bear. "What good is it, Commander? Shall we start a zoo?"

Jason laughed, short and sharp.

"Guess you could at that," he said, stroking his beard. "Put me and him in the same cage. He's just about my size, give or take a headache." He shook his head. "But his worth is what he knows and where he was. Found him up the hunting park. Alone."

tel'Vosti and Erob got very quiet. "So close?" Val Con murmured and Jason looked down at him, suddenly serious.

"Up on the east ridge," he said; "buncha hundred meters down from the top. Couple klicks out from where Kritoulkas is holding line—show you on the map." He grinned again and pointed at the monitor. "But what d'ya think, Scout? Ain't he a beauty?"

"He does seem to be indicative of his type." Val Con turned back to the screen, trying to see through a burly guardsman to the prisoner himself. "You say you hit him across the head?"

"From behind," Jason admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "He'd just got through sending a fongbear on its way and I fell on him like the mountain coming down. Seemed like a good idea, but, damn, then I had to carry him out!"

Miri laughed, eyes on the monitor. "How bad's he hurt?"

"Doc's checking. Once I found out I was in one piece I real quick sprayed him with a double-dose of Sleep-it from my medkit. Put his gear in the other room, there. 'Spect the scout'll want to see it."

"Will you?" Miri muttered.

Val Con sighed. "I anticipate the need. Jason seems to have surmised that a scout will speak Yxtrang."

"Oh." Miri blinked. "Have to rig up a talkie, I guess."

"Perhaps." Inside the freezer-bay, the medic had straightened, shut down her monitor and moved toward the door, shooing the guards out of her way like so many chickens. Val Con felt himself go cold as her patient was finally and fully revealed.

Something of his shock must have reached Miri through their lifemate link. She leaned close. "Boss? You OK?"

"OK—yes." He spun as the door opened, claiming the doctor's attention with a hand-wave.

"That man—is he whole?"

She shrugged, Terran-wise. "He'll do. Sleeping pretty sound." She glanced down at the med-comp. "If he's got reactions anywhere approximating a Terran of like mass, he ought to be out of it in forty minutes—an hour at the outside."

"Hour to look at his stuff," Jason said. "And to figure out how best to ask him." He paused and looked straight at Val Con. "You can talk to this guy OK, can't you, son?"

"Talk to it!" Emrith Tiazan repeated, somewhere between horror and fury. "Korval—are you able to speak to that thing?"

But Val Con was at the monitor now, studying the image of the man in the room beyond, thinner than his length predicted, stretched across a bed made of six hastily arranged packing crates, and covered with a standard merc pack-blanket. His short-cropped hair was light brown in color, the features of his face indistinct behind an intricate mask of tattoo.

"Korval." Erob again. He was mightily weary of Erob all at once, as he was weary of Jason and the war they had not yet engaged. This man here. This man. . .

"Korval!" Emrith Tiazan snapped, no doubt relying on the Command Mode to turn him. "I require response. Are you able to persuade that thing to speak to the point?"

It was a wrenching effort of will to turn away from the monitor and the image of the sleeping giant. He came about slowly, feeling his face stiffen into unaccustomed lines, as it would, of course, following the tutelage of the old tapes. He felt the proper phrase rise to consciousness, and then to his lips.

Erob's face showed fear; tel'Vosti's disquiet. Jason actively goggled. Miri alone moved—to stand between himself and her delm, and to lay her hand upon his sleeve.

"Easy, boss."

The old learning let him loose, so that he smiled at her through the hunger of his need, and lay his other hand over hers.

"Forgive me," he said to Erob's startlement. "The Yxtrang language is difficult and in some ways uncouth. In certain matters, however, it is perfection itself."

He glanced over his shoulder for a last lingering sight of the screen.

"I am able to speak to this man," he told Erob softly. "Indeed, we spoke at some length when last we met."

She stiffened. "Do not trifle with me, Korval."

Val Con regarded her blandly. "I do not."

It was tel'Vosti who moved this time, to take the old lady's arm and very nearly shake it. "Let the boy be, Emrith! This is not the time to stare a dragon in the face."

Val Con turned to Jason. "I will inspect his equipment," he said, his eyes straying back to the monitor. "Do give me a whetstone, and a length of good rope. I shall speak with him alone, when he wakes."

"Right!" said Jason. "Whatever you say."

Val Con nodded. "Exactly as I say." He glanced at Miri and smiled, suddenly and joyfully, into her worried eyes. "With my captain's permission, of course."

"That one," Liz snapped, certainty hitting her system like a jolt of Stim.

Beside her, Nova yos'Galan blinked, then fingered the controls, bringing the image into close-up.

"Look carefully, Angela Lizardi. You are certain?"

"Told you I'd know it if I saw it again," Liz said, shaking off the dregs of her drowse. "That's the one."

It wasn't much to look at, compared with some of the other Liaden clan sigils they'd scanned over the last couple hours, but made its point with a purity of line that Liz at least found—refreshing.

Nova yos'Galan had turned from her study of the screen and was looking at her out of wide violet eyes. "You are certain?"

Liz frowned. "How many times you want me to say so, Goldie?"

She had discovered rather early in their association that Nova yos'Galan did not care to be called "Goldie." She thus reserved the name for times of special aggravation, of which, unfortunately, there were many. The Liaden woman had a gift for setting a body all into angles.

This time, however, the nickname earned neither darkling glance nor frown of disapproval. Instead, Nova turned back to the computer display and fiddled the buttons on her armrest until the sigil was replaced with a screen full of Liaden characters. She fiddled some more and the words dissolved. When the clan badge was back on-screen once more, Nova spoke, calmly and without inflection.

"That is the badge of Clan Erob."

Liz frowned again, trying to read something from the side of her companion's face or the set of her shoulders, which was about as useful as trying to read a meteor shield.

"If your friend held such a thing, she was of Erob, through Line Tiazan.
Tee-AY-sahn
," Nova breathed and grimaced. "Katalina
TAY-zin
. Pah!" She turned and looked at Liz once more, eyes shielded now, hard as amethyst.

"Be—very—certain, Angela Lizardi."

"Think I'm playing with your affection? That's the design. I'd know it if I was blind."

"Clan Erob," Nova said again, flat-voiced.

"If you say so. Got a problem, Goldie? What're they, the Capulets?"

Puzzlement flickered in the depths of the violet eyes, and was gone in the next instant. "Indeed, no. Clan Erob is none other than our eldest ally. We were to have shared genes again this generation, as I recall it."

"That so." Liz chewed on it a couple seconds. "Damned if I can see why you're cooked, then. If Redhead and that brother of yours are married—and I ain't believing
that
'til I got it from Redhead herself—but
if
they are, seems to me you oughta be booking the band for the reception and pulling together a guest list."