Crystal Soldier (34 page)

HE'D THOUGHT ONCE before that Cantra flew like a bomber pilot, and now, as the aches built up in his knee and his admiration grew, he was sure of it. He made a mental note to check on the training given to
aelantaza
.

The thing was that—within this strange space—her reactions were absolutely sure, and absolutely perfect. She threw the craft through crevices in the dust, around rocks and coils of rocks, sliding this way and that . . . . for in this realm beyond the galaxy, action and reaction held sway, with but a nod and a twitch required to overcome the microgravity of the dust clouds or the trajectory of free-moving rock.

On the screen was the destination, a rather forbidding tumbling conglomeration of dust-stuck rock not even big enough to become a globe under its own gravity. The course to the target was irregular, with projected and suggested approaches appearing on-screen, being selected or deselected, or assigned back-up . . .

Jela watched and sat second, hands and eyes mostly in synch with the real action, though from time to time Cantra's choices were idiosyncratic at best. In some ways he was reminded of training games and mock-cockpits, where one could play a ship with abandon . . .

Here though, abandon was not what she was displaying. Here, Cantra was showing honed skill. If she flew it like it was a game, then it was her game, and not his. But then it was her ship, and she the one who had actually been to this unlikely bit of
here
before.

"Pilot," she said suddenly, "what we're going to do is to fly formation with this thing for a bit. There'll be another one around for us to look for, not a lot like it . . . "

And with that, she rolled the ship slightly and slung it around, slowly matching pace with the object—asteroid, dead comet, dustball . . . .

Once they had achieved "formation," Jela saw it was too bright and speckled to be a mere dustball. In fact, it showed signs—

"See there," Cantra said carefully, her eyes on her screens, "we got a dozen flat surfaces or so here. One of them ought to be mostly red in visible spectrum, assuming we can shine enough of a light on it. It's been worked a bit, and it'll be obvious if we got the right rock. That's gonna be your job, and I'll tell you when to go to light. Same time, you're going to bring them guns up full, just in case."

"Pilot," he replied, and found the controls for the tracking light. They felt odd to his hands, and he doubted that he had touched anything like them since his long-ago days as a pilot trainee.

What kind of rock could have been "worked a bit" out here? Something else to add to his . . .

The spectralyzer flashed, and the infra-red too. There
was
an anomaly.

"Light it up!" Cantra snapped, but he'd already hit the switch, gotten the range—

They were following the rock formation, its weird slow tumble immensely weirder under the ship's spotlight. The rock looked like it had been sliced and grooved, as if whole slabs had been taken away. There was a flash of color—greenish—then gray, more gray, and—

"Red!" he said, exultantly.

"Right," Cantra agreed, lazily. "We got the right rock. Now all we gotta do is sit back and listen real hard. I'm punching the bands up now. Get me a directional on it if you can. "

There was a signal . . . so faint as to barely budge the meter. A chirping sound, in identical sets of three, filled the bridge.

The ship's computer struggled with the signal for some moments before Jela sang out.

"Got it!" He copied it to the pilot's screen, and heard her laugh, soft.

"Right," she said. "I'll just mosey us along in that direction for a bit. When you get a change in those bird-noises there, Pilot, just put the docking lights, and docking shields, and docking radar on." She sent a quick glance over her shoulder.

"Dulsey, this is your last chance to change your mind."

"I wish to be with the Uncle," the Batcher said firmly.

Cantra sighed, soft, but plain to Jela's ears, and her fingers formed the sign for
pilot's choice
. He signaled agreement in return.

"To hear is to obey, then," Cantra said to Dulsey. She cocked at eye at him and grinned.

"We're sitting on Uncle's back porch. We'll just knock on the door and see if anyone's to home. Whenever you're ready, Pilot."

"Shut it down," Cantra said quietly.

Acknowledgment from the Uncle's pile of rocks had finally been received after an annoyingly long—perhaps calculatedly long—wait. Now they sat almost against the rock wall, tied to the haven by two light ship tethers and their own extendable gangtube to one of four observable access ports.

Jela paused with his hands on the board and considered her profile.

"Pilot? No need for all of us to go down. I can stay, if you want it, and keep the home fire burning."

She turned her head, giving him a steady, serious look, with nothing wild or irritable about it.

"Shut it down, Pilot."

There wasn't any arguing with that glance of calm reason, and Jela turned his attention to an orderly shutdown of his board, the while pondering the fact that it was impossible to argue with Cantra when she was unreasonable, and impossible to argue with her when she wasn't. Convenient. He'd also come to notice that she wasn't unreasonable nearly as often as she let it seem that she was.

The system lights went down one by one and in good time the ship was off-line, saving life-support.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod, once, then put her finger on the release and let the webbing snap noisily back.

"Up, up!" she said, spinning her chair around to grin first at him, then at Dulsey. "Best not to dally and make our escort irritable."

He mistrusted the grin, just like he mistrusted the total lock down of the board—in all his experience of her Cantra had never locked the board down tight. That she chose to do so here, at a docking she plainly distrusted was—notable. Coupled with the mandate that all three of them step off for a stroll through an asteroid habitat controlled by questionable forces, it became out-and-out worrisome.

On the other hand, there
wasn't
any arguing with her—she was ship's captain, and the only one ammng them who had previous experience of the Uncle.

Carefully, then, he unstrapped and stood, finding Dulsey already on her feet, face shadowed.

"Second thoughts, Dulsey?" Cantra asked.

Dulsey's chin came up and she met Cantra's eyes.

"Not at all, Pilot."

The grin this time was more amusement and less artifice, by Jela's reading. Which didn't make it any more comforting.

"I'm glad to hear you say that. The Uncle I knew, he placed a certain value on boldness. For what it's worth."

Dulsey bowed slightly. "I am grateful to the pilot for her advice."

Cantra sighed, then abruptly waved a long hand toward the door and presumably the hall beyond.

"The two of you get on down to the hatch. I'll catch you in six."

Jela felt the hairs at the back of his neck try to stand up all at once. If this was a vary
now
—but he couldn't for the life of him see how, with the ship shut down into deep asleep, so he grinned, nice and easy, for the shadow across Dulsey's face, and nodded at the door.

"After you."

"Yes, Pilot," she said, subdued, turned—and turned back.

"Pilot Cantra."

The winged brows lifted over misty green eyes.

"What's on your mind, Dulsey?"

A hesitation, and then another bow, this one very deep, and augmented with the stylized gesture of the right hand which roughly meant
I owe you
according to particular civilian signing systems.

"The pilot has acquitted herself with honor," Dulsey murmured in the general direction of the decking. "I am grateful and I ask that she remember my name, should there come a time when my service might benefit her."

Jela held himself still, already hearing Cantra's pretty, sarcastic laughter in his mind's ear—

"Stand tall, Dulsey." Her voice was firm, and if it held any grain of sarcasm, it was too fine for Jela's ear to detect.

The Batcher straightened slowly, and brought her eyes again to the pilot's face. Jela, watching that same face, found it . . . austere, the green eyes bleak.

"
A person is worth as much as the value of their debts
," she quoted softly. "You've heard that said, Dulsey?"

"Yes, Pilot. I have heard it said."

"Then you want to take some time to sort over who I am and what I'm about in the general way of things. Most would hold that an honorable freewoman shouldn't ought to devalue herself by standing in debt to the likes of me."

Dulsey smiled.

"A honorable freewoman must be the judge of her own worth, Pilot. Is this not so?"

Cantra's mouth twisted, unwilling, to Jela's eye, toward a smile.

"You'll do, Dulsey. Now the two of you get outta here. I'll meet you at the hatch in six. Ace?"

"Ace, Pilot," Dulsey said serenely, and turned to the door. "Pilot Jela?"

"Just a sec," he said, catching a ghost-view of dry sand behind his eyes.

He returned to his station, pulled open the hatch and removed a sealed water bottle from the pilot's emergency provision cache. Cracking the seal, he walked toward the tree, heard a murmuring inside his head, saw a flicker of visuals he couldn't quite sort . . .

"I know it's not much," he said, softly, dampening the dirt over the roots. "We're not intending to be long. You keep a good watch and let me know if anything odd happens while we're away."

Bottle empty, he straightened, reaching up to touch a couple of the higher leaves. Taller than he was, now. Not that that was such a trick.

There was a sudden quick rattle, along with image of a pair of dragons nipping at a tree limb to grab . . .

"Fair's fair, I guess," he said, catching the fruit pod as it snapped itself from the branch and fell.

"I hate to bother you, Pilot," Cantra's voice carried a payload of sarcasm now. "But the sooner we're gone, the sooner we're back and the less time your friend there needs to pine for your return."

Another image formed in back of his eyes, very precisely: A small dragon sitting on the grass at his feet, exercising its voice loudly—and even more loudly as a sudden fall of leaves came down over its head.

Jela laughed.

Behind him, he heard Cantra sigh. Loudly.

"Now what? It's telling you jokes?"

Still grinning, he turned, resealing the bottle absently.

"Pilot, the tree is learning irony from you."

Bland-faced, she considered him, then spun on one heel to address the tree in its pot, and executed as high-flying a bow as he'd ever seen, complete with a showy swoop of the left arm.

"It is my pleasure to be of service," she said, then straightened in a snap. "
Both
of you mobile units— outta here. Now!"

"Pilot Jela?" That was Dulsey, sounding nervous, and right she probably was.

"I'm behind you," he said, though he'd have given his accumulated leave, assuming he had any, to see how Pilot Cantra was going to gimmick the board. The tree's gift he happily consumed before they reached the dock.

THE DOCK WAS just like she remembered—rock, rock and more rock—the floor unevenly illuminated by the white glow from several cloudy columns of candesa, the ceiling lost in darkness, from which the light, so-called, woke an occasional spark—like a star glimpsed through drifting debris.

At the base of the ramp stood a figure in light-colored 'skins, blond hair cut close to his head. The utility belt around his substantial waist supported a holstered needle gun.

Behind her, she almost heard Jela's watchfulness click up a notch, like maybe a man didn't have the right to wear a gun on his own dock. Feet still on the gangtube's ramp—technically still on her own ship and not yet on the Uncle's terms—she raised her hands to shoulder level, fingers spread. The status lights on the cuff of her 'skins thereby brought into view glowed green-green-green. So far, so good.

The guard sniffed, but didn't ask her to turn out her pockets, which was just as well.

"Names?" he snapped.

"Cantra yos'Phelium," she answered, giving him mild on the theory that it would probably annoy him. "Pilot-owner of
Spiral Dance
, just like I told Admin."

"You didn't tell Admin who else."

"That's right," she agreed, taking no visible offense. "Reason being they're here under my protection. We have business with the Uncle. I'd appreciate a pass-through."

The guard sneered. He had a good face for it, Cantra thought, critically.

"What makes you think he's here?"

"Only place I knew to look," she allowed. "Fact is, I didn't expect to find anybody here, excepting maybe a guard or two. So, if the Uncle ain't here, I'd appreciate a message sent, telling him Cantra yos'Phelium has something that belongs to him and where does he want it delivered?"

"What do you have?" The boy was going to go far with that kind of attitude.

Cantra sighed.

"You the Uncle nowadays?"

His face tightened. "No."

"Then it ain't your business," she said, all sweet and reasonable. "Send the message or pass us through—that's your piece of the action. Not so hard, is it?"

Another glare, which Cantra bore with slightly pained patience, then a sharp jerk of his head.

"This way." He turned and strode off across the dock without waiting to see if, or how, they followed, which just about shouted out the information that there were other watchers—armed watchers, make no doubt—in the shifty shadows.

Behind her, she felt Jela go up another notch on the wary meter, nor she didn't blame him. Glancing over her shoulder, she wasn't particularly surprised to find Dulsey directly behind her, with Jela's reassuring bulk bringing up the rear.

Protect the civilian
, she thought, and deliberately didn't think what that made her, taking point like a damn' fool.

Their guide was apparently leading them toward a blank stone wall. Just before his nose hit rock, the wall split, the halves sliding apart. He strode briskly through, Cantra a couple steps behind.