Korval's Game (28 page)

Nova turned her violet eyes to Liz. “The mercenaries will have ways of determining if this rumor is true. Am I correct?”

Girl was too damn bright, Liz thought, and sighed.

“Yeah,” she said, “they probably do.”

“I thought so,” said Nova, and the ship snapped into Jump.

LUFKIT:
Merc Hall

There was
a wonderful bustle of busyness, a splendid to and fro, not unlike to art. Not unlike at all, Edger considered, watching the hasty humans dart up and down the wide hallway. The art of which his youngest of brothers, Val Con yos’Phelium Scout, was a master.

He tarried by the door some noticeable time, by human counting, his brother Sheather at his side, absorbed in the spectacle.

Not all was hastiness within the hall. Here and there, at appropriate and artful intervals, were arranged islands of stillness: a counter, a computer, and a human sitting behind a table. It was these still islands which, in a soaring of art, inspired the most of the hastiness, Edger saw, noting with a connoisseur’s eye the flow of tensions, light and human plain song between and among the stillnesses.

He could have tarried in contemplation yet some while, save that the introduction of himself and his brother into the fringes of the work did subtly alter the flow, and exerted compulsion upon one of the centers of stillness, requiring the human seated behind the table to rise and throw himself into the hasty human river. In a very short time, indeed, by Clutch standards, he emerged and engaged in that activity known as “salute.”

“Sirs. I’m Sergeant Ystro Ban. Is there some assistance I can offer you?”

“I thank you, Sergeant Ystro Ban, and honor your inquiry. We come seeking a soldier and were told she might have left word of her whereabouts with kin at this hall.”

The Sergeant’s face knotted up most wonderfully and his eyebrows went up and down rapidly.

“Well, sir, we don’t normally just give out the whereabouts of one soldier. If you like, you can leave a message for her here and I will personally make sure she gets it, when she reports in.”

“I regret that our need is more pressing than that, Sergeant Ystro Ban,” Edger said, and with no real astonishment then heard his brother Sheather’s voice, questioning most mildly.

“I wonder, Sergeant Ystro Ban, is it always so bustling in your hall?”

“Huh?” He looked over his shoulder as if he had forgotten the bright, busy clatter in the course of their discourse together, then shook his head.

“Naw, this is something special. Got a blood war on our hands and everybody who can carry a gun is signing into the rescue team.”

“Forgive me,” Sheather said. “A blood war? What has gone forth?”

Sergeant Ystro Ban shrugged. “What it looks like is a Yxtrang invasion force came into Lytaxin system and set up housekeeping. Trouble is, there’s mercs trapped on the planet, and we don’t aim to let ’em fight this one without backup.”

Edger exchanged a glance with his brother Sheather, who blinked solemnly and asked yet again.

“Which mercs are these, Ystro Ban, who are trapped upon Lytaxin?”

“’Bout half of the Gyrfalks, is what we heard here.” He moved his head from side to side. “Word is Suzuki’s on Fendor, which is fine by me. Wouldn’t want to be on the same planet with Suzuki right now.”

“It is these Gyrfalcons who are kin to our sister, Younger Brother?” Edger asked slowly.

“Brother, I believe they are.”

“Ah.” Edger turned his saucer eyes to Sergeant Ystro Ban. “Can you tell me if this hastiness we observe here will be replicated upon Fendor Mercenary Headquarters? And perhaps in other like halls?”

“Damn straight,” said Ystro Ban.

“I understand you,” said Edger and again sought the eyes of his brother, which were bright with the same thought, he would swear, that illuminated his own mind.

“I detect the hand of a great artist, Oh, my Brother,” Edger said.

“I also,” Sheather returned.

“And what more like our sister, that she should aid her kin in peril?”

“Nothing more,” said Sheather.

“So.” Edger turned back to the still and patient human and lifted a large three-fingered hand.

“I thank you for the gift of your time, and the jubilation of your news, Sergeant Ystro Ban. Do you go yourself to Lytaxin?”

“Couldn’t keep me away with a battalion.”

“I am gratified to hear it. Perhaps we may see you there. Come, Younger Brother, and reflect upon the depth of our brother’s art, who inspires us to ever hastier action!”

LYTAXIN WARZONE:
Altitude: 12 kilometers

Habit
almost killed him.

Shan flicked on the lifeboat’s homer and directed its attention to Lytaxin Spaceport, his own attention more than half-occupied with keeping the clumsy little craft airborne and relatively upright while nursing the sadly-depleted fuel supply.

So far, he’d managed to avoid meeting anyone with a general grudge against Liadens and his goal was to come to ground before he did. The lifeboat’s pitiful guns were all but exhausted and the thought of trying anything resembling evasive action against atmospheric fighter craft was enough to make his stomach knot.

Anxiously, he ran his eyes over the displays. Skies showed clear on screens one, two, three, and four. Good.

Screens five and six were something else again.

He had been at Lytaxin Spaceport no more than four Standards past. Then, it had been a bustling, mid-sized port, with half-a-dozen public yards and a sprinkling of private. There had been traffic, lights, and people—ships. Ships on hot-pads. Ships on cold-pads. Ships under repair and ships being hauled from one pad to another.

What remained was wreckage. Glass-edged pits marked the places where ships had been caught unaware, murdered while they slept. The Port Tower was a cowed, half-melted framework of naked girders. The blastcrete streets had been bombed into gravel pathways, separated now and then by segments of fencing. Twisted metal was strewn haphazard and the blasted pathways gleamed where glass had run in rivers, and frozen again where it lay.

Destruction burned his eyes and his hands were moving across the board, ripping the lifecraft into another course entirely before his thinking mind fully realized his error.

The lifeboat bucked, responsive as a rock. Shan swore, briefly and with sincerity, flicked a glance at the falling fuel gauge and thence to the screens, which showed plain, placid sky all about.

More than a touch of the luck in that, he owned, and no more than he had traded for, should the screens suddenly show him the very Yxtrang fighter craft he wished so ardently to avoid.

But, if not the Port, where might he go on a planet riddled in war?

“To Erob, of course,” he muttered, fighting the lifeboat’s tendency to go upside down relative to planetary surface. “Do try not to be a slowtop, Shan.”

If Erob were overrun by Yxtrang, scattered, murdered and no more? Shan sighed and glanced again at the fuel gauge.

“Why to Val Con, naturally enough. And pray the gods he’s close by.”

It was not wise, what he did next, and he was certain his teachers in Healer Hall would have counseled strongly against it. But there really was no choice, given the fuel gauge—riding in the red zone, now—the planetary maps the lifeboat did not carry and his own rather strong disinclination to die.

The little ship was steady for the moment. Shan gripped the edge of the console, closed his eyes and dropped his inner shield.

There was no time for finesse, no time to prepare himself properly. He brought Val Con’s emotive template before his Inner Eyes and flung himself open, spinning out in a search that was far too wide, concentration centered on that unique pattern.

He found instead a vast and welcoming greenness, familiar from childhood, comforting as the touch of kin.

Shan took a breath and abandoned Val Con’s template, listening for what the Tree might tell him.

It was not, of course, his own Elder Tree, but Erob did keep a seedling. Nor did Jelaza Kazone necessarily speak to those who served it, but it had ways of making itself and its desires known.

The Tree was not read as a Healer might read a fellow human. Rather, the Tree borrowed referents from one’s own pattern, displaying them in sequence at once familiar and vegetative.

Thus, the message arranged itself within Shan’s senses: Joy—Welcome. Joy—Welcome. Joy—Welcome. Spice—whiff and stem—snap, from a memory of breaking off a leaf. The taste of Tree-nut along his tongue. A second impression of leaf, and a sense of pushing, gently, away.

He was aware that his hands moved across the board and was helpless to stop them. After a short struggle, he did open his eyes and found the dials a blur, the fuel gauge half-gone in red. Within, the Tree touched one last memory—warm lips laid soft against his cheek—and withdrew. Shan slammed his Inner Wall into place, shook himself and looked to the screens.

Number three showed an Yxtrang fighter, growing rapidly larger.

***

The Tree’s influence
upon his body had produced a set of coordinates, residing now in the console’s readout. Shan flicked a toggle and locked them, sparing a moment to hope the Tree possessed an adequate understanding of the limits of fuel and the action of gravity on an unpowered object.

The fighter loomed larger. Shan turned his attention to the guns.

Pop guns they were, though Seth had put his to good account, and badly drained besides. Shan’s hands flashed over the board, shutting down auxiliary and non-essential systems, shunting the extra power to the guns. The energy level crawled upward, stabilized well below the ready line.

Shan chewed his lip, checked the board, checked the fighter—gods,
close
—checked the screens—and stopped breathing.

The Tree’s coordinates were bringing him in on an encampment. He could discern tents, machinery,
soldiers
mistily in screen six. There was a standard, snapping bold in the wind below: an enormous white falcon stooping to its kill down a field of starless black.

Terrans. And no doubt close enough to the place the Tree had intended him to go. But not with an Yxtrang on his tail.

His hands moved again, dancing over the board, shutting down everything but air and the computers, sending every erg of energy to the guns and
still
they held below the line.

Shan flicked a glance at his pursuer, another at the camp and the surrounding terrain. He reached up and pulled the worksuit helmet over his head, hit the toggle with his chin and tasted canned air. His hands moved across the board, shutting down ship’s life support, feeding the energy to the guns.

The gauge topped the line. And stopped.

Inside the helmet, Shan nodded and made one more adjustment on the board, draining what was now the topmost cannon, feeding everything he had into the belly gun.

Power surged in the single live cannon. He could have wished for more. He could have wished for both guns full primed and on-line. For that matter, he could have wished for a ship to equal the one that came against him, but time was short. He had what was needful.

Just.

He flicked a toggle, relieving the boat of its mindless adherence to the coords, and slowed, dropping a few artfully wobbled meters toward what appeared to be a canyon, or possibly a quarry, at the extreme edge of the encampment.

Behind him, the fighter took the bait.

The other pilot jammed on speed, guns swiveling. Shan waited, wobbling slightly lower—though not too low—toward that tempting rocky edifice. Waited until the fighter was committed, until there was no possibility of a fly-by—and no possibility of a miss.

Jaw locked, he whipped the thrusters, spending the dregs of his fuel. Agonizingly slow, the lifeboat tumbled. The fighter snarled by, the other pilot seeing the trap too late. Shan hit the firing stud, and the single canon blared, hot and bright and brief.

The fighter exploded, raining burning bits down into the encampment’s perimeter.

And lifeboat number four, guns and fuel utterly expended, fell the few remaining meters to the planet’s surface.

***

He opened the hatch
into the wary faces of two soldiers—one Terran, one Liaden—both holding rifles.

Quietly, he stood on the edge of the ramp, gauntleted hands folded before him. He’d taken the helmet off, exposing his face and sweat-stiffened hair; the land breeze was cool against his cheeks. The sounds were bird sounds, and the slight wind abrading leaf and grass.

It was the Terran who spoke first, sounding friendly despite the carbine she kept pointed at his chest.

“You OK, flyboy? Nasty fall you took there.”

“Thank you, I’m perfectly fine,” Shan assured her. And smiled.

The flip maneuver had worked precisely as he had hoped. The lifeboat had fallen about 12 meters, to land, right side up relative to the ground and unharmed, on the rock apron at the entrance to the quarry. The pilot had received a stern shaking and would have bruises to show, but the space suit and crash webbing had cushioned the worst. “Perfectly fine,” stretched the truth, given other conditions, but not nearly into fantasy.

The Terran nodded and turned to her mate.

“Call and let ’em know we’re bringing him in.”

He slung his rifle, pulled a remote from his belt and spoke. “Quarry patrol. We have the pilot, safe. Will transport.” He brought the unit to his ear, listened with a frown, then thumbed it off and hung it back on his belt.

“The sub-commander wishes to speak with him,” he told his partner.

“Right,” she said and jerked her head at Shan. “OK, friend. Let’s take a walk.”

Eye on the rifle, Shan hesitated. The woman shifted, her demeanor abruptly less friendly. He held up his hands, gauntleted palms empty and unthreatening.

“I do beg your pardon! I have no wish to keep the sub-commander waiting, but the case is that I am separated from my ship and I have every reason to believe that an attempt at contact will be made, once it is recognized that my position is stable. I should be here to receive that message when it comes.”

The woman shook her head. “Sorry, pal. Sub-Commander Kritoulkas wants you and we’re under orders to bring you. Wouldn’t care to have to shoot you in the knee and carry you myself, but we can do it that way, if you insist.”