John Maddox Roberts - Spacer: Window of Mind (24 page)

Suddenly Kiril felt weak. To go back aboard that ship again!

Nothing in space or on the alien planet was as frightening as being within Izquierda's power again. She thought about what was at stake, for a long time. "All right," she said shakily, "I'll go."

The skipper sat back in her chair. "I know what that cost you. Tor told me what you asked him to do. Who'll you take with

you?"

"The Vivers," she said without hesitation. "Give them beamers, they're itching to restore their honor."

For the first time the skipper cracked a faint smile. "Good choice, but I can't let them have beamers. I'll admit I was never so shocked in my life as when you told me Izquierda had unsecured beamers aboard ship." She shook her head. "It's hard to believe a ship's officer could act like that. Don't worry, those two can raise plenty of hell without beamers."

"When do we go?" Kiril asked, now anxious to get it over with, one way or the other.

"It'll take them maybe a day or two to bring the ship here masked." The skipper lit up one of her noxious cigars and turned, if anything, even more serious. "Look, Kiril, I realize I have no business even talking about the future, since there's not much chance any of us have one, but I want to say a few things. You know that the ship's kid usually has to leave when he or she outgrows the job?"

"I've been told."

"We never just beach them. When they leave the
Angel,
they have an apprentice spacer's bracelet and we always make sure they have a berth before they leave. But there've been exceptions. Lafayette was one."

"He told me about that." Was this what she hoped it was?

"I want you to be another. I want you to stay with the
Angel.
You can apprentice for any position on the ship, except for engineer, which goes to Lafayette." The skipper crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. "I mean this, Kiril. If it's my job you'd like, I'll see to it you have your chance. I can't live forever. If you want a bridge officer's position, just say the word. It'd mean a few years away from the ship at one of the academies, but I'd pay for the schooling."

Kiril turned away quickly, her eyes stinging. "Let me think about it."

"Sure," said the skipper. "There's lots of time. Pretty soon there may be no ship, anyway. 1 just wanted you to know. You always have a place with us. Understood? That's already sworn into the ship's log, with Ham as witness, just in case I don't make it but you and the
Angel
do."

"1 understand," Kiril said. There was absolutely nothing else she could think of to say.

"Now get yourself something solid to eat and rest up. I've got work on the bridge. Don't talk about your mission to anyone except K'Stin." The Skipper left, and Kiril was alone with her thoughts. The distant future, with her as a permanent resident aboard the
Space Angel,
she pushed from her mind. It was the immediate future that concerned her.

She ate hastily and went to the Vivers' compartment. So far she had seen none of the others. She rapped on the hatch of the inner room and it snapped open with startling swiftness. "What is it, small and skinny one?" K'Stin demanded. "Is it danger?"

"Not now, but soon. We have to talk in private." She stepped inside and K'Stin closed the hatch. In the tiny room she could hardly turn around without bumping into one of the Vivers. Before, the hulking, armored creatures had always made her nervous. After Izquierda, though, nothing seemed very scary.

"We're going to go hit the Supernova," she said. "Just me and the two of you."

K'Stin's rigid face could not grin but it was in his voice. "Fun at last. When do we go?" She told him of the skipper's plan. "Will we take beamers?"

"She says no. It's against the rules."

"Foolishness!" K'Stin groused. "We Vivers are not mere pulpy humans with no sense of space and distance."

"I thought you
were
humans," she said, "just gene-manipulated."

"True, but we don't like to think about it. We have the most perfect of distance perception and orientation. I could set the beam-length control to sweep a hold without cutting the paint on the far bulkhead."

"Relax, K'Stin. She's not letting you take any beamers from here aboard the Supernova, but we're going in through the hold where the mercs have their quarters. I know where the weapon racks are. I, for one, am not worried about breathing vacuum. Not with Izquierda to think about."

The Viver enveloped her shoulder in his huge hand. "You have the proper spirit, skinny one. You should have been a Viver."

She felt a little better when she left the Viver quarters. If she had to go in with somebody at her back, the Vivers were the best possible choice. She wondered what to do. The skipper had told her to rest up for her mission; but she felt fully rested and energized Better, in fact, than she had felt in years. Then she saw all the litter that was still lying about from the crash and she remembered that she was still ship's girl and had a job to do.

For the next few hours Kiril swept and picked up, loading the wreckage into a wheeled hauling cart to be tossed into the ship's trash compacter. Anything that was too heavy for her to pick up, she left until one of the men could give her a hand. When she had the main corridor straightened away, she worked on the mess room and galley. There wasn't all that much to do there, because the rest of the crew had already done most of it. She went to her own cabin and tidied it up and then wondered what else she could do to keep herself from thinking about what was ahead.

Michelle found Kiril mopping up in hydroponics and scolded her for overexerting herself. Kiril said that she felt fine, and Michelle left. A few minutes later Lafayette appeared and took the mop. Gently but firmly he shoved her into the corridor and told her to go relax. The rest of the day went like that. She wished she could tell Michelle to leave her alone. The medic's determination to look out for Kiril's health was having the opposite effect.

After the evening meal she went to her cabin and stretched out on her bunk. She fidgeted and fretted but could not sleep. It was an unusual experience. In the past she had slept under the rubble of half-collapsed buildings, on the lumpy floors of cellars, in the chilling cold of rain-swept doorways. All she'd had to do was close her eyes to nod off, always ready to waken instantly at the approach of danger. Now she couldn't sleep, in comfort and relative safety. Even in the Supernova she'd slept.

She remembered the soporific that had lulled her in the big ship. Maybe that was what she needed.

She got up and dressed, then went to Michelle's quarters. She found the medic writing something on a glowing screen with a stylus, "i can't sleep," Kiril told her. "You got anything that'll put me out?"

Michelle dropped the stylus to her desk and glared accusingly at Kiril. "She's sending you back up there again, isn't she? To the Supernova."

"I thought you weren't telepathic," Kiril said, shocked by the sudden anger.

"Who needs it?" Michelle said. "I've been watching you all day. You've always been attentive to your duties, but after all we've been through, anyone would kick back for at least a day. You've been working like you just got the job and you think you'll be fired if someone sees you taking a break. You're terrified, aren't you?"

"The skipper told me not to talk about it."

"You might as well, or I'll go up to the bridge and have it out of her. Now talk."

Reluctantly Kiril unfolded the story. Michelle listened with a stony expression. "It's crazy."

"It's the only way and you know it," Kiril said. "I'm not happy about it, but I'm ready to go through with it. It's what the Dzuna will go along with, and we need their ship."

"But it doesn't need to be you," Michelle protested. "You've already done more than ever should have been asked of you. Do you have any idea how the rest of us have felt, knowing that you've been taking all the risks?" Kiril was speechless, seeing the tears standing in Michelle's eyes. "You should have seen this crew that second night you went aboard that ship. Ham and Finn and Torwald snarled and snapped at one another like dogs that don't like each other's scent. Lafayette sulked in the engine room and wouldn't come out to eat. Bert wouldn't answer the skipper when she talked to him, and Nancy spent the whole night in the observation bubble, playing her violin. Achmed prayed all the time. Even the Vivers were more insufferable than usual."

"And you?" Kiril asked quietly.

"I told her if anything happened to you, she could transfer me to the TFCS. I'd get a position as a hospital assistant until we reached port and I could find another ship."

"You mean this crew was breaking up over
me?"
Kiril said, incredulous. "Why? I wasn't taking any more risk than the rest. We were all under death sentence the minute we got that summons. Izquierda's been planning to destroy this ship and everyone in it for years! Unless we can find a way out of this jam, none of us are gonna live. What difference does it make if I get it aboard that ship or in this one?"

"At least it wouldn't be
him\
" Michelle said, vehemently. "Nobody should be asked to put himself into that man's power, and you've done it twice, realizing what he was even before the rest of us did, and now you're going to do it again. It's not fair."

"Fair?" Kiril said. "I've heard gamblers use that word, but they all cheat. It doesn't apply here. We got to do what we can to get us out of this, and I'm in a position to do us some good. The skipper's plan is sound. She's got the whole ship to think about. I'm the one who can testify about Izquierda, and if anybody can keep me alive long enough to do it, it's those Vivers. Besides, I think I have one other advantage."

"What's that?" Michelle asked, dabbing at her eyes.

"Remember what I said a while back, about how Nagamitsu hates Izquierda's guts, even worse than the skipper?"

"Yes. What of it? Probably most of the navy officers who've heard what he did during the War hate him."

"It's more than that. He has some other reason and it's personal. I think all he needs is an excuse to move against Izquierda. Well, I can give him that excuse. I don't think he'll waste any time."

"Are you sure?" Michelle asked.

"I've been right about these things so far, haven't I?"

Michelle slumped with her face buried in her palms, and Kiril stepped behind her and put her hands on the older woman's shoulders. After a few minutes Michelle rummaged through a drawer and handed Kiril a small packet of tabs. "Here. It could happen tomorrow, and you'll need some sleep. Take one of these."

Kiril took them and went back to her cabin, not trusting herself to say anything more. She was glad that the tab was fast-acting, because it was the first time she had ever cried herself to sleep since she was a little girl.

"The two ships," Kuth was saying, "are in orbit around the great moon. We suspect that is because . . . they can make a faster . . . getaway should things turn bad. it is only . . . prudent. One of our vessels picked up a piece of wreckage in planetary orbit, it contained the . . . memories of one of your computers. Among them was . . . location data of many human worlds. The . . . chances of making such a find are unthinkable. This was the work of your . . . traitor."

"We expected such a move," the skipper said. "The instruments will prove to be from the fake
Angel.
Another nail in our coffin. The man overlooks nothing. As long as you don't attack the ships, they won't leave or attack you. They're trying to figure out a way to patch up this situation while Izquierda plumps for war. He must want to get out bad by now. He doesn't want hostilities to commence while he and his ship are vulnerable."

"What's stopping him?" Torwald asked.

"Nagamitsu," she answered. They were gathered around the mess table once again. "He must suspect Izquierda had something to do with all this. He's making him keep the Supernova close to the TFCS. Old Ramon must be sweating about now."

Kiril had arrived a few minutes before. She ate silently while the skipper and the Dzuna commander talked. Would today be the day? She was scared and unhappy, but she was ready to go through with it. She found that it wasn't easy to swallow, and she was afraid that people would notice, so she sat back, ignored her plate, and confined herself to sipping tea.

Most of the crew had wandered in, still yawning and stretching. They were dozily drinking coffee when Kuth broke off what he was saying and ran his fingers over a plate strapped to his forearm. "The ship is here," he announced through Homer. "It is time."

The skipper's eyes locked with Kiril's for a long second.

"Let's go." Afterwards, Kiril wasn't sure which of them had said it. She got up and noticed Michelle, sitting stone-faced, looking at nothing.

Slow on the uptake, Torwald looked around in puzzlement. "Ship? What the hell is—" But Kiril and the skipper were already following Kuth out of the mess room.

"K'Stin. B'Shant," the skipper called. The two Vivers fell in behind them, blocking the corridor as the rest came pouring out of the galley area, shouting and asking questions.

They came out into the airlock room, where the Vivers picked up the weapon harnesses they had waiting there. "What is this?" Finn shouted. "Hold it! Where are you sending her?"