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VI. pleyver: high station
nammerin: namport; central

Three days after his arrival at High Station, Commander Gil shoved his chair back against the office wall and looked at the blank screen of his desk comp in disgust. Only a polite regard for the tender sensibilities of the clerk/comptech the station had assigned to him as a runner, secretary, and clerk kept him from tearing his hair out in handfuls.

But I’m seriously tempted, he thought. Everything I check comes up zeroesand the General isn’t likely to take ‘Sir, I haven’t the faintest idea’ as an acceptable report.

Gil sighed. “All right. Let’s take it again from the top.”

“Bringing up the timetable now, sir,” said the clerk-comptech, and Gil watched the familiar data moving in a slow scroll up the screen of the desk comp.

Item: two strangers enter clinic. Time approximately 2200.

Item: Flatlands power grid goes down in the llx-3 sector. Time 2209.27.

Item: Certainly a dozen, possibly as many as a hundred, unknowns attack the clinic from at least two directions at once. Time approximately 2215.

“Stop,” said Gil.

The scrolling halted, and Gil exhaled wearily. “Before we go any farther, let’s take another look at that pair of mysterious strangers.”

“Datadisk two,” said the clerk, feeding the slice of plastic into the comp. “Classified files from Space Force Intelligence; unsworn statements of Clerk/Comptech Second Class Peyte, Portmaster Sharveelt, and Dock Complex Loading Boss Bevan Cemliah; supporting data from Far Station Pleyver and Embrig Security on Mandeyn.”

“And a whole lot of good it does us,” finished Gil, as the first file came up: text on one side of the screen, and on the other a blurred image lifted from one of the port complex’s security cameras. The grainy flatpic showed a young man caught in the act of looking back over one shoulder at something behind him, giving a good angle on the eye patch, the long queued-back hair, and the immaculate ruffled shirt that—if CC2 Peyte’s observations could be trusted—was shortly to be soaked with blood.

“Tarnekep Portree,” said Gil. “Captain, Pride of Mandeyn. By all accounts at least as vicious as he looks. Rumored to work as a hired killer more or less for the fun of it. But no hard facts or even solid gossip; only thing the Central Criminal Data Net could turn up was a ‘Wanted for Questioning’ from Mandeyn, about eight Standard months back. Somebody shot a gambler’s face off, and Embrig Security’s mildly curious about it. And that, my friend, is it for Captain Portree: possibly one of the galaxy’s major hard cases, possibly not. Next file.”

Another flatpic from port security filled the screen. This time the picture showed a slight, grey-haired man whose face reminded Gil of his old mathematics instructor.

“Gunner/copilot on Pride of Mandeyn. Called ‘Professor,’ which isn’t surprising. No record on him anywhere at all, which is.”

“Maybe the ‘Professor’ identity is a new one, sir,” suggested the clerk.

“I’ll buy that,” said Gil. “Not that it gets us any further at the moment . . . next file.”

The statement of Portmaster Sharveelt began its progress up the comp screen: arrival time and crew list for the Libra-class freighter Pride of Mandeyn, Tarnekep Portree commanding; information—backed up by the Port Accounting Office—that the Pride had paid, in cash, High Station’s docking fee for a three-day stay . . . “didn’t bitch about it either, the way most of those independents do”; further information that six hours and forty-nine minutes later the Pride had left High Station without filing a movement report or asking for a refund . . . “and I’ve seen independents forget to file before, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one leave early without screaming for his money back.”

Gil leaned forward. “Put the next bit on audio—there’s some stuff I want to hear again.”

“Switching to audio playback, sir,” said the clerk, and Gil heard his own voice coming out of the desk comp’s on-board speaker:

Do you recall anything else unusual about that evening, Portmaster Sharveelt?

No, not really, Commander. Things were pretty tame down at our end. Didnt even have any of the dirtside commercial shuttles coming up. We usually get four a night from Flatlands, but that night we didnt get anything at all between the twenty-one-thirty and the zero-eight-hundred.

Does that sort of thing happen often?

Not at all. Maybe the bosses dirtside are crooked, but the shuttle operators are real spacers. I’ve been here since High Station was nothing but an orbital platform, and they’ve had maybe one or two flights canceled in an average month—a few more during the spring storms. But three shuttles in one night—no, never.

Gil signaled to stop the audio. “This job is turning my brains to sludge. I should have caught that part the first time. Make a new entry in the timetable file: ‘Twenty-one-thirty to zero-eight-hundred, commercial shuttles removed from service.’ ” He leaned back, smiling for the first time in several hours. “I think we’re finally starting to get a handle on this thing. Is there any cha’a around the office?”

“No, sir, but Requisition Processing, down the hall, has a galley urn set up. If you like, I could—”

“Fetch some? Please do. I can handle the comp while you’re gone, no trouble.”

The clerk headed out the door. Gil dragged his chair back up to the keyboard and punched up the next file: the unsworn statement of Dock Complex Loading Boss Cemliah, who’d been overseeing a post-off-load inspection at dock #237 when the Pride lifted from #238. Gil toggled on the audio playback and let the loading boss’s hoarse tones fill the little office.

I saw three men come onto the dock, walking fast, just before she lifted . . . They all looked kind of rocky, if you ask me. The one with the eye patch had blood all over him and was limping pretty bad, and the old guy had his arm in a sling . . . Yeah, one of ’em was a tall man in a Space Force uniformnah, I couldn’t tell you his rank . . . How the hell am I supposed to know if he was going along willingly? He wasn’t screaming and kicking, if that’s what you want to know. I got a job to do, Commander—I can’t check out everything funny-looking that goes down between here and the storage bays.

Cemliah had been an unpleasant sort, Gil reflected, but at least the loading boss’s statement had cleared up the mystery of Lieutenant Commander Jessan’s disappearance. Wherever the Khesatan medic was at the moment, he’d left High Station on board Pride of Mandeyn.

The Pride herself could be any place in the galaxy by now. She’d gone into hyperspace just beyond Far Station, the manned beacon platform that marked the outer edge of the Web and Pleyver’s closest jump point. Par’s time-tick, correlated with departure information from the High Station docks, gave the Libra-class freighter’s time for the Web run as six hours and twenty-one minutes.

Commander Gil wondered briefly what the General would have to say when he read that bit. Depending on which of Metadi’s stories you chose to believe, Tarnekep Portree had managed to trim the former privateer’s unofficial record by anywhere from nine minutes to half an hour.

That was hot piloting, any way you looked at it, hot and more than a little desperate. Gil remembered the General, in the office on Galcen: “Somebody dirtside whistled up a squad of Security fighters to chase us all the way to hyper.”

“Somebody dirtside,” said Gil aloud, as the door slid open and closed again behind the clerk and a hotpot of cha’a.

“Sir?”

“We’ve been taking this from the wrong end all along. Pack a spare set of skivvies—we’re going down to Flatlands.”


Ari left the hospital aircar in a lot on the outskirts of Namport and went on foot to the seedy district where G. Munngralla had kept his shop. With RSF Corisydron back in Nammerin orbit for the weekend, and the Strip full of liberty parties bent on fun and mayhem, he had no desire to emphasize his connection with the Space Force presence on-planet.

To the same end, before leaving base, he’d traded his uniform for a free-spacer’s outfit of shirt, trousers, and boots. And if anybody who saw him was going to remember a Selvaur-sized human packing a heavy blaster, and never mind what clothes he was wearing—well, they’d have to spot him first. Llannat Hyfid might have been able to pick him out as he moved from shadow to shadow, but nobody else in Namport tonight was likely to have her combination of an Adept’s talent and an upbringing on the sparsely settled world of Maraghai.

Ari had been fostered on Maraghai himself, and when Ferrdacorr son of Rrillikkik swore to raise a friend’s son like his own, the Selvaur did exactly that. By the time Ari left for the Academy, he’d made his Long Hunt in the high-country ridges with the rest of his agemates, and could move through underbrush with no more noise than a passing thought. When he reached the vacant lot where Five Points Imports had stood, he knew that he hadn’t been followed.

In the months since explosion and fire had gutted Munngralla’s shop, plume-grass and creeper vines had moved in and taken over the rubble-filled lot. Ari leaned against the brick wall of the building next door, letting its shadow hide him while he watched the grass stalks nodding in the warm, humid breeze. One patch of grass dipped its feathery blossoms against the wind; he marked the position and kept on waiting.

When a quarter-hour’s vigil brought nobody else to the lot, Ari decided that the rendezvous might not be a trap after all. Just the same, he pulled his father’s blaster from its holster before he spoke.

“Over here.”

“Doc?”

“Over here,” he said again, and watched the grass bend and rise as the other made his way across the lot by way of the weed-covered perimeter.

The little man emerged from the overgrowth at Ari’s elbow. “You the big medic?”

“Look at me,” said Ari. “Take a good guess. Is there a message?”

“You got a pair of dice?”

“Yes.”

“Give them to me.”

Ari dropped the dice into the other man’s palm. “Here you are. What’s the word?”

The little spacer pocketed the dice. “Two parts. First thing—from now on out, you’re a member of the Brotherhood. Munngralla stood sponsor for you, because you helped him when he needed it.”

“Thanks,” said Ari.

I think, he added to himself. He wasn’t sure what his superiors in the Medical Service would say if they found out one of their junior officers was a member of the galaxy’s biggest criminal guild—but he didn’t for a moment suppose he’d like to read their comments in his fitness report.

His father the General, on the other hand, was certain to find the whole idea hilarious.

“You mentioned two things,” said Ari. “What’s the second?”

“A warning,” said the little man. “Our friends in the profession say that someone’s put out a contract on you.”

First poison, then a Magelord, and now a hired assassin, thought Ari. What did I do to deserve all this? “Do you know who they’re getting for the job?”

The little man shrugged. “Someone named Portree—a Mandeynan with an eye patch. We didn’t hear anything more. If you need to, though, you can call on the Brotherhood for help.”

“How?”

“You know how to find the five-spot already,” said the spacer. “Tell them you’ve traveled a long way for the sake of a proper word. That should get you whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” said Ari again.

“Live well,” said the other, and vanished back into the shadows.


Ari was in the CO’s office first thing the next morning, so early that the commanding officer’s pet sand snake still dozed on its bed of heat-bricks in front of the office safe. At Ari’s footstep on the threshold, it uncoiled a foot or so of its mottled length and raised its head to give him an unblinking amber stare.

“Just me,” said Ari, smiling as the heavy wedge-shaped head subsided onto the bricks. He and the sand snake were old acquaintances by now. In another moment the CO emerged from the inner office, a steaming mug in one hand and the first of the day’s message printouts in the other.

“Ah, Rosselin-Metadi. What brings you in here so early?”

“Something I found out last night, sir. I think you ought to know about it.”

The CO added the printouts to the snowdrift of flimsies already covering his desk. “Something you found out,” he said. “And what’s that?”

“Well,” said Ari, choosing his words carefully. “You remember the people who helped us with the Rogan’s epidemic?”

The CO nodded. “I remember them—with gratitude, I might add. The latest word from Supply is that we might see the first shipment of tholovine sometime next month.”

“Next month,” Ari said. “Does Supply live in the same galaxy as the rest of us, sir?”

“They claim to,” said the CO. “But I’ve heard otherwise. Anyhow, Rosselin-Metadi—what do you hear from your friends?”

“They say I’ve got a contract out on me.”

“I see,” said the CO, after a second or so of silence. “Did they happen to say why?”

“Because I make such a damned good target, I guess . . . No sir, no reason.”

The CO looked sympathetic. “Is there anything you want me to do about it?”

“No, sir. I didn’t get anything solid. Only the warning.”

“Well, write up what you heard, and leave it on my desk when you’re finished. That way, if anything does happen to you, we’ll have a place to start.”

“No problem.”

“Good,” said the CO, nudging the sand snake with the toe of his boot. The snake uncoiled and flowed off in the direction of the inner office. “Another thing, Rosselin-Metadi.”

“Yes, sir?”

“That blaster of yours—I don’t care if it does make you look like Black Brok the Terror of the Spaceways. As of right now, you wear it wherever you go.”


After getting his warning from the Quincunx, Ari spent the next two weeks looking over his shoulder and jumping at shadows. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, though, and eventually things like staying away from windows and not turning his back on the door became everyday behavior for him, the way the heavy blaster and its holster became just another part of his uniform.

He was in the Pharmacy dome one afternoon, finishing up the monthly controlled-substances inventory, when the wall comm link sounded his tone sequence.

“Rosselin-Metadi here.”

“Hey, Ari—this is Dispatching. We just got one from a farmer out in the boonies. Looks like a house call.”

“Why me? I’m not on for another two days.”

Dispatching sounded amused. “He says he’s got a delirious Selvaur on his hands. And since we haven’t got a squad of commandos and a professional interpreter—”

“You decided to send me instead.”

“Hey, ‘only the best for those we serve,’ right?”

“Right,” said Ari, sighing. “ ‘Spaceways and away,’ then.”

He closed up the controlled-substances locker and headed for the station’s hangar bay, stopping in at Weather for the current report (“light rain, chance of fog”) and at Control for the coordinates of the farm.

“It’s off at zero-two-zero-five-five-one-zero-zero on the other side of the Divide,” said the comptech on duty. “That’s going to be right on the sunset line by the time you get there, and pure hell to come back from if it’s a bad case.”

“I’m betting it’s fungoid fever,” said Ari. “We’ve seen a couple of cases the past week or so, and it drives the Selvaurs right out of their skulls.”

He went on out to the aircar and gave it a quick walk-around. When he came back to his starting point, he saw that he wasn’t alone any longer. Llannat Hyfid leaned against the cockpit door, dressed in her usual off-duty clothes—a plain black coverall, with the Adept’s staff slung across her shoulders by its leather thong.

“I didn’t know you were on call,” he said.

“I’m not for a couple of days. But you’re in for a long trip, and I thought I’d see if you wanted company.”

“I could use the relief pilot,” he admitted. “Especially if I end up bringing a delirious Selvaur back to base after dark. Did you let anyone know you were coming?”

“You can call it in once we’re on our way,” she said. “But let’s get going—you don’t want to lose any time.”

“Another one of your feelings?” he asked, opening the door and climbing into the pilot’s seat.

Llannat followed. She laid the staff down on the aircar floor and began strapped in for takeoff. “Something like that,” she said.


The trip out wasn’t bad at all. The mountains east of Namport loomed a dark green under the mist, and the grey clouds had thinned enough to allow some watery sunshine to light up the peaks. Once the aircar crossed over the Divider Range, the big water-grain farms of the central wetlands spread out from horizon to horizon in regular squares of pale yellow-green, latticed with silvery drainage canals and blotched with stands of massive, soil-holding grrch trees.

In the copilot’s seat next to Ari, Llannat sat without talking. She had a knack of making her silence seem restful, and he wondered if it came from her Adept’s training. Or maybe it was part of the basic model, like dark eyes and a kind heart, or long black hair that always had a few shorter strands curling loose from its regulation up-off-the-collar style.

Right now, she sat with her eyes closed and her hands lightly clasped in her lap—meditating, or perhaps just catching up on some sleep. Ari smiled in her general direction, and let the physical pleasure he always got from flying mix with the calm of her presence, putting him more at peace with himself than he’d felt in weeks.

The aircar droned on toward 02055100. The sun was falling down the sky behind them as they approached the landing zone. The control panel beeped, and a readout started blinking.

“There’s the beacon,” said Llannat, opening her eyes and coming back to the here-and-now so smoothly Ari decided she hadn’t been sleeping after all.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

The farm’s landing pad was one of the raised concrete strips common qut here in the wetlands. Once the aircar had settled to rest inside the markers, Ari powered down the engines and squinted out of the cockpit window at the empty landscape.

“Talk about the back of beyond,” he said. “I thought the upcountry settlements were bad, but at least they usually send out a welcoming committee whenever Medical shows up in town.”

Llannat bent to retrieve the emergency carry pack from its place behind the copilot’s seat, and began giving the contents a quick checkover. “This looks like one of those big machine-worked operations. The farmer’s probably with his partner.”

“How are we supposed to find them?” grumbled Ari. “A dowsing rod?”

“Go that way,” said Llannat, without lifting her eyes from the kit. She pointed toward the eastern horizon.

Ari followed the line of her gesture to where the ridge of a steep-pitched tile roof showed over the green of the sprouting grain paddies. He looked back at the Adept. Her head was still bent over the open kit, and he could hear her counting ampules of medication under her breath.

“All right,” he said. “That way it is. The kit okay?”

“Just fine.”

They left the aircar—Ari with the carry pack, and Llannat with her staff—and climbed down a rusting metal ladder to the surface. Ari promptly sank three inches into the mud. He pulled one boot free of the black ooze with a heavy sucking noise, and Llannat giggled.

Ari made a face. “Visit scenic Nammerin, where it rains twelve days out of every eleven. Come on, let’s get slogging.”

They started out along the raised earthen track between the water-gram paddies. The slup-slupp of their boots in the thick mud sounded loud against the late-afternoon stillness.

Ari heard the far-off ramble of farm machinery, and nearby in one of the grain paddies a drum-lizard throated out its deep, resonant chunkachunk, chunkachunk. Nothing else besides their footsteps disturbed the quiet at all.

Their shadows stretched out ahead of them as they approached the house, a deep-eaved stone building in a paved yard. “The place looks deserted,” said Ari.

“The farmer’s inside,” said Llannat. “I can sense it.” Her voice sounded strained. Ari wondered if the uncanny lack of noise and activity made her as uneasy as it was making him.

“I hope I was right about this being fungoid fever,” he said. “If I was wrong and it’s a psycho case, who knows what we’ll find.”

Llannat nodded without speaking, and unslung her staff.

Ari shifted the emergency kit to his left hand and drew the blaster from its holster. The door of the stone house was a hinged job of cured grrch wood—hard as iron, and almost as heavy. Ari pounded on the dull black wood with the butt of his blaster until the whole yard echoed, but no one answered.

“Try the knob,” said Llannat.

Ari glanced over at the Adept. Her dark face had a tight, unhappy look to it, and her knuckles were bloodless on the hand that gripped her staff.

“You have a hand free,” he said. “You try it.”

He watched, blaster at the ready, as she worked the knob with her left hand, and gave the door a shove. It swung open.

They waited in tense silence for a few seconds. Nothing came out through the door—and as far as Ari could see or hear, nothing moved inside.



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