WARP world (19 page)

Seg had stood by her side for the entire journey, assisting her when she asked for help. They spoke only in moments of necessity. After anchoring, she had immediately begun hauling water.

“In a few hours, we’ll have a enough light to travel safely,” Ama had said, as she splashed the first bucket of water across the deck. “Uval didn’t tell anyone what he was up to, I’m sure of that. As long as this is gone,” she gestured to the mess at the stern, “and we keep Manatu hidden, there will be no ties to us. Alisir’s a busy port; boats come and go all the time, and the other Kenda will cover for me. But we’ll pull anchor as soon as the tide lets us, and get cruising to T’ueve. The more distance we put between us and Alisir the better.”

Seg nodded, “I’ll see to Manatu.”

Neither moved nor spoke. Seg opened his mouth but a long, low groan from below deck halted his words, and Ama returned to her scrubbing.

Now, as the last bits of blood disappeared beneath her brush, Ama’s thoughts returned to question of Seg.

He was a dangerous man. He and Manatu both, whoever they were, and who knew what kind of business they were up to; she would be smart to flee. But these men had also saved her life.

She rested against the handle of the brush, lifted her head and stared up at the sky, the moon long gone, the dark black fading to grey.

Who are you?

Seg found Manatu awake and aware. He was sweating profusely, a product of the medication as much as the injury. A neuroblock was taking care of the pain, but it couldn’t eliminate all the discomforts associated with a severe internal wound. He needed cleaning, a task that Ama was far more suited for, by Seg’s estimation. On the edge of the bunk, he sat next to Manatu, and shifted the man’s sleeve to access to the hidden auto-med readout.

“Blood pressure elevated,” he read out, “blood toxin level climbing, early indications of infection.”

Manatu moaned.

“According to the machine, without prompt care you have approximately thirty-six hours to live,” Seg lied. “We should have you back before then, though.”

Back on the World, they would replace Manatu’s liver with a cloned organ, created before the man had extrans’d and stored along with other vital replacement organs.

Everyone on the mission, Seg included, had a bank of spare organs waiting for them, all the vital organs except the brain. In theory, brains could not be replaced but, looking into Manatu’s dull eyes, Seg pondered the prospect that it might be possible under certain circumstances.

“You keep looking at me, Theorist,” Manatu wheezed, a note of question in his voice.

“Simply assessing your condition,” Seg answered. “Do you need anything? The auto-med indicates against eating, but you are permitted water.”

“I have water,” Manatu answered, with some effort. “How much longer?”

“Six hours until warp window. I’m going to initiate comm soon and inform the House that you’re returning.”

And probably be requested, forcefully, to either abort or reconnect with Kerbin. He could tell from the last comm with Jarin, before he and Manatu had ventured off on their own, that House Haffset were extremely wary of the unortho path he was taking on this mission. It was only the promise of the data he was feeding to them that had kept them from pulling the plug and calling for intrans for the entire squad.

Just a little longer.

Without another word to Manatu, he stood, walked to the locker that held their baggage and extracted the large unit that could be configured to function as comm or warp gate. From the extent of the mess above deck, he estimated there would be ample time to send a comm before Ama returned below deck. Not that Ama’s eyes were a concern any longer, more so the concern was that those back on the World would see he had exposed their technology to an Outer, prior to the raid, and let her live.

In reality, Manatu had perhaps ten hours or less to live, and Seg would have to move up the transit window in order to save him. This was going to complicate everything, bring more questions and more potential disruption.

Storm take the idiot. Better if he had died. Better to just let him die. But he had not died, and now Seg would not permit him to do so. Once he was no longer Seg’s problem, he could go and get himself punctured and killed as he pleased, but until then he must live.

Assembly of the large, rugged framework was tricky without help. A set of skinned knuckles later, he had managed to put it together. He sat down and waited for the comm, wishing he could just pass this up and let the Guild Council stew while he carried on with his business.

Once he had established himself as a field Theorist, it was his plan to keep comms to a minimum, outside of emergencies such as this one. He glanced over at Manatu, who was babbling softly about his mother or some such nonsense. The sooner he got the feverish trooper off the boat, the better for his state of mind.

Time. He pressed the glyph sequence in the prescribed order, as the carrier signal punched through the warp from the other side, creating a pinhole connection between this planet and the World, allowing crude but functional visual communication.

Of course it was Jarin, who was handling customer liaison for this contract, who answered.

“Segkel,” Jarin said.

“Jarin.”

“You are creating quite the stir.”

“I’m not aborting.” Jarin made him feel as though he were still a pupil, still a step behind. By his mere presence, Jarin overshadowed him. “The mission planning is sound, the targets are viable, and the payoff will be incredible.”

“I hope so, for your sake. What is your status?”

“There was a local conflict. Trooper Dibeld was critically wounded. I need to move up the warp window.”
Leave it at that, Jarin.

“That will be costly,” Jarin said, “but it can be done. Obviously the situation on the ground has shifted and become more problematic. Will you be linking up with Lieutenant Kerbin?”

“No.” Seg watched carefully, but Jarin showed no reaction.

“Unortho. Your post-mission critique is going to be heavy with that term.”

“Along with words such as ‘unprecedented success’, I’ll wager,” Seg said, defensiveness creeping into his voice. “I’ve got it under control, Jarin.”

“You are on your first mission extrans, you are deep in Outer territory and your bodyguard is wounded badly enough that you must ship him back. You have sent your escort squad off haring about, taking vita readings, while you propose to solo the rest of your self-assigned portion. You are not in control; you are riding the Storm-crest right now. I know you, Segkel.”

It was undeniably true. It was also irrelevant. Manatu’s injury aside, he was under control, and so long as he was under control, he could bend the mission to his will. “I’m not aborting and I’m not reconfiguring, Jarin.”

“Were you wounded as well?” Jarin asked.

“No!” Seg said, fingers curling into a fist out of Jarin’s view.

Jarin sighed. “Then we will proceed as per the directions of the Field Theorist. I told my associates as much before the Council ratified your continued mission support an hour ago. It is for the best that they were unaware you were about to send this fellow back with holes in him.”

“One hole,” Seg corrected.

“Critically wounded,” Jarin continued, “and unable to continue the mission. I have faith in you, Segkel. If you fail, though, this will end your career in an inglorious and ugly manner.”

“If I fail, I’ll die,” Seg said, with the confidence of a young man who did not accept the prospect of death.

Now Jarin reacted, a touch of some more personal emotion crossing his eyes. “Be careful, pupil.” He paused before adding, “There’s one last thing.”

Seg repressed a sigh.

“Yes?”

“This woman you sent back.”

Woman
. While Seg did not embrace the practice of keeping caj for himself, he accepted it as a societal norm. Jarin, on the other hand, was more radical in his beliefs. He had issues about Outers and caj. He didn’t use the term ‘caj’; he preferred to refer to them as though they were People. It was his own quirk of unortho. He also didn’t own any, and generally avoided partaking of caj labor when he could. He didn’t advocate for their release or anything that insanely outlandish, so his eccentricity in this area was tolerated, though it was the source of quiet and covert comment. Nothing too loud–Jarin had eyes and ears everywhere, and was noted for his ruthless retribution in the political arena.

“What about the Outer?”

“You didn’t send her for processing. I was wondering if you had considered some of the ramifications.”

Seg opened his mouth, then closed it. What was the old man referring to? “What sort of ramifications?”

“She was violently abducted, physically abused, her first introduction to our world was a humiliating and impersonal decontamination process, and then she was essentially sent to holding quarters and left alone.”

“And?”

“Segkel,” Jarin said, with another sigh, “you fail to consider human factors at times. If you leave a person in that state for a month, what you are going to end up with is an insane, gibbering wreck when you return. There is a reason the typical method is to send your captives in for processing. At the very least they receive human contact.”

Storm take me
. Jarin had caught something he hadn’t considered–again.

He hadn’t even wanted to abduct the Outer to begin with, but that was not information he would share over an open comm. At this stage in his career, he could risk no questions or speculations about his loyalty to the People’s doctrine. Damn Kerbin and damn him.

“What do you propose?”

“I will take care of her until you return, and see to it that she is in some sort of workable condition for your
amusement
when you get back.”

Of course Jarin would assume the worst of the situation, the worst of him.

“Thank you,” Seg said, the words ashes in his mouth.

“If you need to clean up I’ve brou—” Ama’s voice halted. Seg turned to see her standing on the bottom stair, bucket in hand, eyes fixed on the gate he was assembling. “What are you doing? What is that?” she asked, when she found her voice again.

He nodded toward the crossbar he was struggling with. “Come here, pull that out of the socket for me.”

Ama lowered the bucket of water slowly and stepped forward, then paused before her hand contacted the metal. “If this is Shasir magic…”

“The Shasir have no magic. What they have, among other things, is simply complicated metal, metal alloys, as this is.” He jerked his head toward the tube again. “We have to hurry. Manatu is dying.”

Ama looked over her shoulder at Manatu, then grasped the metal rod and tugged until it was free from the socket. “You’re not Damiar,” she stated, as he motioned to her to hold another piece of the odd mechanism.

He stared intently at the disjointed pieces of metal before him as he reconfigured the system from comm to warp gate and considered his reply. This was the most dangerous moment yet, the moment that could damn the entire venture and lead to hundreds of deaths, including his own.

He checked the alignment of the accumulator arms, then nodded and wiped his hands on his trousers. “No,” he said finally, “I’m not Damiar. Or Shasir. Or Welf. Or Kenda. Or anything else you’ve ever met.”

“Very well, you come from…from a far part of the world that is unknown to me, but how is this…thing…” she gestured to the machine as he passed her a handful of small parts to hold, “going to save Mana—”

The metal bits clattered to the deck as she grabbed his forearm and stared.

“Where is your wound? Who are you?” Ama demanded, her hand clamped down on his white skin.

“Segkel Erarant, Guild Theorist,” he said, pulled his arm away and held it up for her to examine. “And yes, I am not from anything you’re familiar with. Help me finish this, and you’ll learn.”

Ama didn’t move. “Where did you get this magic? Where are you from? Why are you here? On my boat? What—”

“AMA!” Seg grabbed her wrist, squeezed hard and shook her. He lowered his voice but fired out every word, “Save your questions. Manatu is dying. Now help me!”

She blinked as if she had just awoken, looked at the machine then back to Seg, then helped him collect the rest of the dropped parts. “Can this magic heal him?”

“This will take him where he can be saved. And stop calling it magic. You know your world, S’orasa, is round, correct?” he asked, as he clipped the power pack into place.

“Of course.”

“Do you know that there are other worlds in the sky?” he continued, facing away from her as he checked the control screen and ran diagnostics.

“Just the Cloud Temple.”

He rolled his eyes, “Yes, the cloud temple.” The last two words rang with contempt. “Turn that piece there.” He pointed to a dark grey circle, the size of a saucer. Ama rotated it but Seg stopped her. “No, you slide the cover plate eyeward,” he said, referring to Coriolis rotation back on the World. He sighed and, realizing that she had no clue what that meant, reached over, his hands over hers, to demonstrate the proper direction. His hands lingered on hers for a moment.