IN COMMAND Control at Prime Base, the main battle tank showed RSF Ebannha as a bright blue triangle standing off at a safe distance from the red dot that signified the Deathwing raider. Much closer, Ebannha’s boarding craft and the trio of single-seat fighters made a cluster of blue dots around the Magebuilt ship. Karipavo, the relaying vessel, wasn’t in the tank at all.
Brigadier General Ochemet watched the lights in the realtime display and waited for the “amplifying info” that Commodore Gil had promised. The first twinges of what felt like becoming a truly spectacular headache throbbed in his temples. It was bad enough to have Commander Quetaya dead and General Metadi missing—in the company of what Security Chief Gremyl, at least, thought was a replicant imposter; now they had to have trouble on the Mageworlds border as well.
Over at the comm console, a flatvid screen beeped and came to life. “More real-time data, sir,” said the tech on duty. “Sound and pictures from Ebannha’s boarding party, relaying via Karipavo.”
Ochemet moved closer to the flatvid. The pictures there were dark and grainy—partly the effect of data compression and expansion, partly the effect of coming from a small built-in camera on somebody’s pressure suit—but they were clear enough for him to follow the progress of the boarders. When Ensign Cantrel and Chief Yance reached the locked door, Ochemet tensed. He’d been a junior officer in the Planetary Infantry during the mopping-up stages of the last war, and had witnessed firsthand the Magebuilt ships’ practice of self-destructing rather than permit intruders.
“Orders used to be to blow those things up with standoff weapons,” he commented to the watch officer. “Deep space or on the ground, it didn’t matter.”
Unfortunately for the two from Ebannha—and, halfway across the civilized galaxy, for Ochemet’s ever more insistent headache—current standing orders called for boarding and inspection of all vessels passing through the Net. Ochemet watched the flatscreen with ill-concealed anxiety as Cantrel and Yance began yanking sheets of paneling off the raider’s bulkhead, and relaxed only slightly when the key that they found there did nothing more than release the slide mechanism for the bridge door.
The flatvid picture shifted to the interior of the bridge. Next to Ochemet, the watch officer bit back a startled oath as the seated figures of the Deathwing’s pilot and copilot filled the screen. Even with the poor image reproduction, there was no mistaking exactly how the two Mageworlders had died.
“That’s nasty,” said the flattened, off-key voice of Ensign Cantrel over the relays; and Yance’s voice replied, “Look what’s nastier.”
Again the picture shifted. This time the bad light and the relayed transmission failed to show clearly what had drawn the boarders’ attention. A few seconds later, Cantrel’s voice came over the link again: “We’re looking at writing on the main viewscreen. I don’t know what the language is. But it looks like whoever killed these two left a message.”
An even fainter, more distorted voice came through—somebody back on the boarding craft, apparently: “What makes you think that, sir?”
And Cantrel’s reply: “Because he used their blood to write it with, that’s why.”
Ochemet, listened, frowning. A Magebuilt ship emptied to vacuum and set on a course for the Republic side of the Net would be unusual enough; this latest discovery made the derelict into something that might require serious investigation.
“What do you think?” he asked the watch officer. “Mutiny? Somebody going space-happy after too long in hyper?”
The watch officer shrugged. “So he cuts their throats and writes ‘No more fried sausages for lunch, ha-ha!’ in blood on the viewscreen, then takes off in the ship’s shuttle? It could happen, I suppose.”
Ochemet sighed. “We can’t get away with blowing this one in place,” he decided with considerable regret. His life was complicated enough right now without adding an abandoned Deathwing raider to the list of his problems. “But I’m damned if I want to see that ship brought any closer to Galcen than it is right now, either. We’ll send an investigating team out to the Net instead.”
The comms tech spoke up again. “We’ve got a text-only message coming through from Karipavo now, sir, along with the feed from the boarding party.”
“Put the message up on screen three,” Ochemet said. He moved closer and read the paragraphs as they scrolled. They turned out to be Commodore Gil’s recommendations for handling the abandoned raider—which, Ochemet was pleased to note, largely paralleled his own decision. Only the final paragraph was unexpected: “Since we are dealing with a Magebuilt ship on the border of the Magezone, I strongly recommend that there be an Adept with the investigating party.”
“An Adept,” Ochemet murmured, half to himself. “Where do we get an Adept?”
He could, he supposed, ask Master Ransome for the loan of one, but Ochemet was reluctant to put himself and the Service into the Guild Master’s debt. Bad enough we’re having to deal with him over the other problem.
But thinking about Commander Quetaya’s death brought to mind the list Captain Gremyl had made up a few days earlier, of fully-trained Adepts holding Space Force commissions. As the security chief had predicted, there weren’t many. But there’d been one, an ensign in the medical service before going to the Guild, who was still with the Space Force as a lieutenant-equivalent and stationed on not-too-distant Nammerin. She was also—according to a recent and highly classified entry in her personal file—the only member of the service to have actually seen and fought with a Magelord since the end of the War.
Which makes her the closest thing to a current expert we have, Ochemet thought. She’s already under orders for Galcen, so we can redirect her on arrival. It’ll mean doing without a liaison officer to work with the Retreat on the Metadi/Quetaya situation, but I can do that job myself if I have to.
We need Mistress Hyfid out in the Net.
With Ari gone, Llannat found Nammerin a dull place. From time to time she was aware of Owen’s continuing presence as he went about whatever errands Master Ransome had given him—but one rebuff was enough, and she didn’t try to make contact again. She carried out her usual duties with routine professionalism, watched reruns of “Spaceways Patrol” on the staff-lounge holoset, and listened, with all the patience she could muster, to Bors Keotkyra’s unending line of cheerful talk.
“So how’s Ari doing on the Fezzy?”
Llannat swallowed the last bite of her salad and set the empty plate down on the table beside the lumpy couch. In the holoset’s picture tank, the final credits for the lunch-hour replay episode of “Spaceways” dissolved and reformed themselves into a commercial for Nutli’s Instant Super-Enriched Ghil (“warm, stimulating, and guaranteed nutritionally adequate!”).
“He’s probably doing all right,” she said finally.
Bors looked curious. “I thought for sure you’d have heard from him by now.”
“Me?”
“Hey,” said Bors. “You two were always running around together while he was here. I’m surprised he hasn’t kept in touch.”
“He’s old-fashioned in some ways,” she said. “If he says he’ll write a letter, he means ink and paper and an envelope and postage money for the bulk mail, not compressed-text or a voice chip. And bulk mail travels slower than glaciers.”
As she spoke, she found that she could see the letter clearly in her mind: the stiff paper, the ink, and Ari’s strong, broad hand wielding the pen, filling the page with graceful lines of Maraghite script. The image had the sharp edge of reality to it; she knew at once that the letter indeed had been—or perhaps would be—written. Then the mental picture winked out, replaced by a sudden, insistent conviction that she ought to be someplace else.
She’d experienced those feelings before, and had learned not to ignore them. “Sorry, Bors,” she said before he could ask any more questions, and left the staff lounge at a near-run.
Outside in the Med Station compound, she let her feet carry her where they thought best. Their destination turned out to be the communications dome, which housed the planetary and system links and the big, heavy hyperspace comms. The duty comms tech looked up, startled, as she came in.
“I just got a message for you,” he said.
She nodded, not particularly surprised. “What kind of message?”
“Orders.”
“Orders?” It was a possibility she hadn’t even considered. “Why me? I’m not due to rotate out of here for another year.”
The tech shrugged. “They don’t look like rotation orders, if that means anything. Here, you want to carry them to the skipper? He’ll need to sign for ’em anyway.”
“Sure.”
Llannat took the folder and opened it to scan the brief message on the single sheet of flimsy. There wasn’t much to read—just her name, a string of accounting data, and a couple of sentences in Standard Galcenian. Taken together, they pulled her away from Nammerin and sent her, via the quickest available means, to Space Force Headquarters on Galcen for assignment to general duty.
She shook her head, confused. “Damned if I know what they think they’re up to.”
The CO of the Medical Station was equally nonplussed when she brought him the orders for signing. “It’s an odd one, that’s for sure. I’d have expected you to get detailed to the hospital or the clinic, not the general-assignment desk.”
He scrawled his initials on the sheet of flimsy. “You’ll have to run this through Disbursing and Admin before you can be certain, but if I read the accounting codes right, you aren’t being authorized any leave en route, and the travel and proceed time is consistent with some extremely high-priority seating.”
Pausing, he regarded her gravely for a moment. “It isn’t any of my business, of course, but it looks like someone wants you on Galcen immediately if not sooner, and doesn’t want to say why. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess this had something to do with the time you . . . no, on second thought I won’t even try to guess. I don’t have need to know, or the clearances.”
He pushed the folder back over to her. “Go start checking out of the station. RSF Istrafel departs the Nammerin nearspace training area tomorrow, en route direct to Galcen Prime, and you’ll want to be on her.”
Down in Accounting and Disbursing, where the clerk on duty transformed the string of accounting data into actual readable orders, the results came back as the CO had predicted.
The clerk looked impressed. “You must really rate,” she told Llannat. “You’re getting patched through as fast as they can get you in. According to these codes, you can bump full commanders if necessary to obtain a berth back to Galcen.”
‘Thanks,” Llannat said. “I just wish I knew what was going on that was so important. The last time I left Nammerin in this much of a hurry, I was being kidnapped.”
“At a guess, someone punched in the wrong number when they were writing these things up. It happens.”
Nevertheless, orders were orders. Still puzzled, Llannat stood next morning by the Med Station gate, her orders in one hand, a small carrybag in the other, and a larger case holding the rest of her possessions by her feet. The short black staff with its silver tips hung from her waist.
The shuttle bus from Namport arrived on humming null-gravs, and the latest group of spacers needing groundside medical attention came off. Llannat threw her bags into the luggage compartment and climbed onto the bus. The morning was wet and cloudy, but not at the moment raining; she looked out at the low grey sky and the heavy green-and-brown landscape, and wondered if Master Ransome was behind this latest development.
It doesn’t feel like his work, though . . . the general-assignment desk and the high-pri orders. That reads a lot more like the Space Force trying to be subtle about something.
Halfway to Namport the rain started again, streaking the bus windows. By the time she reached the Space Force shuttle field, the rain had become a solid downpour—an appropriate good-bye to the planet, she decided, and one unlikely to foster a state of false nostalgia.
Llannat ignored the rain, since only newcomers tried to keep dry, and put her large bag onto the cargo handler for RSF Istrafel. She kept hold of the folder and the carrybag, and went into the main building to wait for a shuttle to orbit. By midmorning one was announced, and before the sun had made its meridian passage she was aboard Istrafel and heading for hyper.
Halfway across the Republic, on Kiin-Aloq in the Ontimi sector, Captain Natanel Tyche, SFPI, was also in receipt of a new set of orders. Unlike some of the orders Tyche had gotten in the course of his career, these proved upon inspection to be quite simple.
He was to take an entire company of planetary infantry, fully armed with a war loadout, and make contact with RSF Selsyn-bilai, currently in hyper and bound for the Infabede sector. Once aboard the Selsyn, he was to take custody—discreetly!—of Warrant Officer Gamelan Bandur and Clerk/Comptech First Class Ennys Pardu, then contact Space Force Headquarters on Galcen for further instructions.
Tyche wondered what Gamelan Bandur and Ennys Pardu had done. Can’t be anything obvious, he thought. Galcen wouldn’t get involved in local stuff. Espionage, maybe—but why send a whole combat company just to make an arrest?
He shook his head, realizing that he might not ever know the answer to his questions. In terms of clearance and access he would outrank even the commanding officer of the Selsyn. In practical terms, however, that rank meant nothing—not when the entire evolution was classified at such a rarefield level.
That’s what you get for deciding on the diplomatic/military career path, he told himself. It’s “go there” and “do that” and never hear the whole story on anything.
He walked on down to the Infantry barracks to confer with the commander there. The commander was doing paperwork in his office when Tyche knocked on the open door and strolled in.
“Hello, Ehlin.”
“ ’Lo, Tyche.” The Infantry commander regarded him warily. “What brings you here?”
The two men knew each other, but without being more than casual acquaintances. They saw one another in the officers’ club from time to time, and they at least nominally served in the same outfit—Tyche wore the uniform of the Republic’s Planetary Infantry when he wore a uniform at all. But since he was usually seen in mufti, and since he tended to be missing for weeks at a time and never talked in the club about anything more controversial than sports and gardening, the rumor on base was that he was in Active Measures.
“I’ve got an exercise coming up,” Tyche said to Ehlin, “and I’m going to need a company of your best. Who’s up?”
“Third of the Seventh is on deck.”
“I’ll take them. Can you add a heavy-weapons platoon, suitable for shipboard actions?”
Ehlin looked startled and a little curious. “Shipboard actions . . . what are you planning?”
“Sorry,” Tyche said. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Just thought I’d ask,” said Ehlin, without surprise. “I suppose you can’t tell me where or for how long either?”
“That’s right. This is going to be a live-fire exercise, though, so have ’em fully armed, armored, and charged.”
“Right.”
“Thanks.” Tyche passed over a sheet of printout flimsy. “Here’s a copy of my authorization, just so you can keep your files up to date.”
They saluted, and Tyche left. The moment he was gone, the barracks commander punched his comm set. “Have Master Sergeant Onekke step into my office, please.”
While Ehlin was waiting, he punched the order number from the authorization into his desk comp to check on its reality with central files. He wasn’t surprised to see that the orders giving a reinforced company to Captain Natanel Tyche for an undetermined period were entirely genuine.
Ari Rosselin-Metadi had bought the writing paper and the antique pen while he was waiting on Mandeyn for RSF Fezrisond to make orbit. Given his sister’s adventures in Embrig’s port quarter, he’d stayed away from the bars and gaming houses along the Strip, and had gone decorously shopping for stationery instead. After all, he’d promised Llannat that he would keep in touch, and courtesy demanded something more private than a voice chip and less ephemeral than a sheet of printout flimsy.
He didn’t have a chance to use the writing materials for some time. The Fezrisond came out of hyper in Mandeyn nearspace not long after he’d made the purchase, and he’d had to scramble to get back to the port in time to claim a seat on one of the shuttles to orbit. After that, he’d been busy reporting in and relieving the former head of the Fezzy’s medical department—who was planning, or so she said, to retire to the countryside and take up spider farming—and generally settling into his new position of responsibility.
There were adjustments, of course, he wrote to Llannat in the Maraghite script he’d learned during his fostering. On both sides. And for a while I was getting up early and staying up late and having nightmares about filing systems and emergency response times in between. But things are calming down, finally, and I have a few minutes to myself once in a while.
He looked up at the overhead in his quarters and wondered what he should write next. Privacy was always a consideration; bulk mail was harder to tamper with in some ways than voice chips or compressed-text, but easier in others. And while Maraghite script was enough to keep out casual eavesdroppers, it wouldn’t deter anybody who was serious about learning what the oldest of the Commanding General’s offspring had to say.
The Fezzy’s a good ship, he wrote after some thought. Not as relaxed a junior officers’ wardroom here as we used to have back on Nammerin, though. It probably has something to do with RSF Fezrisond being Admiral Valiant’s flagship. That might keep things from getting too casual.
The chronometer-alarm in his desk comp beeped at him, and he put the letter aside unfinished. Time now to get into his dress uniform, instead of his working coverall, and report to the admiral’s office for his long-delayed official welcome-aboard interview with the man in charge of the Infabede sector.
Fortunately for the fit and symmetry of Ari’s uniform, the heavy blaster and its holster now reposed in the Fezzy’s weapons locker. On reporting aboard, he’d been told that the Form 8845 (“officer’s personal weapons, permission to carry”) in his permanent file was superseded by the admiral’s standing order prohibiting officers from carrying sidearms.
Ari had been glad enough to hand over a weapon that tended to make him even more conspicuous than his size alone usually did. He’d followed the standing order without demurral, while reflecting with some inner amusement that it was a good thing his baby sister had never shown much enthusiasm for the Space Force. Beka carried a blaster on her hip and a dagger up her sleeve and her ship had guns, and she would probably start a small war rather than give up any one of them.
The interview with Admiral Valiant took place in the admiral’s office, a locked room at the end of a maze of corridors. Ari, who hadn’t yet succeeded in memorizing Fezrisond’s deck plan, found himself twice caught in dead ends before reaching his goal.
Not good enough, he thought. Emergencies can happen absolutely anywhere. The head of the medical department needs to know where everything is before the trouble starts.
Resolving to spend his free time after dinner in a closer study of the ship’s internal layout, he palmed the security plate by the side of the closed door. A spy-eye on a flexible rod emerged from a recess above the door, and the synthesized voice of an annunciator intoned, “Please state your name, rank, and business.”
“Ari Rosselin-Metadi, lieutenant commander, interview with the admiral,” Ari told the annunciator.
He omitted the salute and the formal phrases that he would have used in speaking to Admiral Valiant directly. The spy-eye and the annunciator were nothing but screening devices, and not themselves his superiors in any way. If the annunciator had employed some version of Valiant’s own speaking voice, the question would have become somewhat more complicated—but this one still used the bland, sexless tones that had come with it from the factory.
The door slid open. Ari stepped through, ducking as usual out of force of habit to avoid bumping his head. Admiral Valiant—a small, dapper man with dark eyes, his black hair tending to silver at the temples—sat waiting at the desk inside. Ari drew himself up to his full height.
“Lieutenant Commander Ari Rosselin-Metadi, reporting as ordered, sir.”
“At ease,” said the admiral. He gestured at the tiny office’s other chair. “And please do sit down.”
Ari sat. Valiant was definitely a short man; even sitting, Ari was more than head and shoulders taller, and the admiral was plainly aware of the fact. The awareness made Ari nervous; his size had gotten him into trouble before with small men who took the mere fact of it as a threat and decided to attack him first. He’d learned a number of ways to deal with situations like that, but he didn’t know how well any of them would work if the other party involved was an admiral.
But Valiant was smiling at him cordially. “So, Rosselin-Metadi—how do you like Fezrisond now that you’ve been aboard her for a while?”
“She’s a big ship,” Ari said. “I’m still learning my way around. But the medical department is first-rate, I can tell you that much already.”
Valiant looked at him sharply. “You came here from Nammerin, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, this isn’t a muddy dirtside station—this is a flagship, and things are different here. My people have nothing less than the best, and I expect nothing less than the best from them in return. Do you understand what I’m driving at, Rosselin-Metadi?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Good.” There was a long pause. When Valiant spoke again, his voice was thoughtful. “ ‘Rosselin-Metadi’ . . . not exactly a name one expects to find in the medical service.”
This, too, was a reaction Ari had learned to anticipate a long time ago. “No, sir,” he said.
“Why did you choose it, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
Of course you can ask, Ari commented silently. You’re an admiral. You can ask anything you please. And you might even get a true answer sometimes.
Aloud he said, “I picked the medical service because I wanted more of a challenge.”
“ ‘More of a challenge’?”
“Yes, sir. Breaking things is easy. Putting them back together again is harder.”
“I see.” Valiant regarded Ari for a moment as if he were going to ask a further question. In the end, however, he said nothing except, “You can go now, Rosselin-Metadi.”
Ari went.
Back in his cabin, the letter to Llannat Hyfid remained unfinished. Without bothering to change out of his dress uniform, Ari took out the paper and the pen and added another paragraph.
I’ve finally met Admiral Valiant, he wrote. He was welcoming enough, but I wish you could meet him too.
There, Ari thought. I hope that says enough without saying too much.