Price of Ransom (3 page)

“You’re not going to get them
all
in prison,” he replied, standing and going to the door. It slipped open. “Are you coming? I’m going to get something to eat.”

Maria remained fixed in her place, staring at the chamber in which Korrigan Windsor, bounty hunter, hell-raiser, and former terrorist, had so recently walked. “Then they’re better off dead.”

“You really hate them, don’t you?” He sounded surprised. “I dislike what they did as much as the next person, and I certainly want to make sure that their way of thinking is never again fostered in our children, but—you do seem rather vehement.”

She did not reply immediately, as if she was considering whether or not to confide in him. After a bit he came back into the room and the motion of the doorway sliding shut behind him triggered something in her. She spoke in a low voice. “The saboteurs killed my sister.”

“
Killed
her? I’m—I’m sorry, Maria. Was it at Chaldee? That’s the only place I know of that civilians died.”

“Besides nonhuman civilians? Who don’t count? No. She was seduced into joining them.
She
was a saboteur. She disgraced our family. And now she’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated helplessly. “I didn’t know.”

“No one does. My family disowned her, and we never spoke of her again. But I loved her. I’ll never forgive them for her death.” Then, as if this admission ended the conversation, she rose and went to the door, waiting as it opened. “Dinner sounds good,” she said in an entirely different voice, casual and pleasant. “How about Stripe’s cousin’s place, over at Benthic Nexus? She does those great Ridani pastries, dappling tarts.”

The door, unbidden, sighed shut behind them as they left. On the screen, the remaining pictures flicked off, one by one, into blackness.

T
HE CORRIDORS OF THE
Forlorn Hope
held a luminescence that fascinated Gregori. Dimmed down, the lights revealed intricate, textured shadings on the walls that seemed endlessly interesting to him. He could follow them for hours, aimlessly, or hide in the shadows to listen to the impassioned conversations that brightened the half-lit mess hall or the high banks of Engineering. The only place he never went was the Green Room—that impenetrable mass of growing things—because it scared him.

Sometimes he even managed to slip unseen onto the bridge, dimmed now like every place else. He would stand in the darkest, most obscure corner and stare at the captain where she sat brooding at the captain’s console, ensconced in a deep-backed chair, the miraculous Bach hovering at her side. It seemed she spent most of her time here the past few days, while they had been drifting in some forgotten tag-end of space; just sitting, staring at the screen of space and stars and one distant sun, a suggestion of brilliance at the edge of the screen.

The dimness lent her pale skin a luminescence that reminded him of the corridors of the ship, as if she were slowly taking in the essence and reflecting it back. As if she were becoming part of the ship in the same way he often felt he was: knowing it too well, so that eventually one’s own self could no longer be separated from the self, the
substance
, of the
Forlorn Hope.

He knew that she knew that he was there, hiding in the shadows. The others—most of them—often forgot he existed, or ignored him, but she was always aware of him, at least when he was on the bridge. That she allowed him to stay, or at least did not care if he did, when others might have chased him off, had long since become one of the reasons he admired her with the kind of fierce, proud admiration that only the very solitary can develop.

But this time there was someone else on the bridge, one of the technicians, busy at a console and oblivious to his silent presence, but the tech’s very shuffling and breathing obliterated the mood of communion he felt had grown in those quiet times he shared with the captain on the bridge: she brooding over their troubles, he absorbing the force of her concentration.

So he turned and slipped out again and padded by back ways and circuitous routes through the darkened corridors to the mess hall. With power shut down to one-third, it had become the central meeting place and general living area for the crew, and it was here that he found his mother.

She drew a seat in beside her so that he could sit down, and he did, not wishing to offend her. As usual, the table was too crowded for his tastes—he long since having learned to prefer an empty cubicle or the secret interstices that others passed by. There were six people, and all of them talking, loudly and without any order whatsoever. When the captain presided over a discussion, people never spoke loudly or out of turn.

“But we’ve been drifting on the edge of this system for three days now, on cut power, cut rations—not to mention the casualties still in Medical who as far as I know are on cut drugs and bandages.”

This was Finch, whose voice, in Gregori’s opinion, always got a little grating when he was agitated.

“The casualties in Medical are the least of
my
worries,” countered Yehoshua. Somehow he always remained calm when emotions rose to their highest. “Whatever other problems or reservations we might have about Hawk, he’s the best doctor I’ve seen work. But we have twelve people on this ship—not counting the casualties who couldn’t be moved, of course—who stayed with us after the mutiny, and their loyalty is not ultimately to the captain but to whatever opportunity she represents, and eventually they’re going to get tired of being refugees and want some tangible proof of that opportunity.”

“And how are they going to get it,” Finch demanded, “when we’re stuck in this system because we don’t have enough power and basic supplies to leave?”

“Enough to leave,” interposed the Mule fluidly, “but certainly not enough to assay this fabled ‘way’ to the old worlds, where presumably opportunity lies.”

The Mule’s comment brought silence. Gregori squirmed restlessly in his chair. Past the tables, he could see the opening through which food was served from galley to mess. In the half-darkness of the galley itself he made out Aliasing’s insubstantial form busy at some task. Normally she would have been out here, sitting beside his mother, contributing now and again to the conversation. But lately, ever since the mutiny, she had kept to herself, as if she were avoiding his mother, even Gregori himself. Some other concern seemed to be preoccupying her, and while it hurt him that she now had little more than an absentminded pat for him when he wandered in to the galley to beg a scrap of sweet between meals, he had long-since developed an ability to hide his feelings, even from his mother.

He sighed, swinging his legs in the gap between the seat of his chair and the floor.

“I still don’t see that we have any choice but to sell our services,” said Pinto, breaking the silence. He sounded a little defensive, which to Gregori at least lent his statement interest. “We can transport cargo—”

“Without permits?” asked Yehoshua.

Pinto dismissed the caveat with a negatory sweep of one hand. “What permits? Central’s authority is gone. I doubt the new government has had time to institute their policies in such detail, and certainly not out this far on the fringe. I’m sure these systems need some quick and reliable transports.”

“Hold on.” Jenny shook her head. “That’s all very well, and probably true, but the incoming comm-traffic we’ve picked up indicates that Forsaken is still under the authority of Central’s troops.”

“Or what’s left of them out there,” added Yehoshua. “Jehane’s people will be out eventually to mop them up.”

“And we’d better be out of here before they get here,” Finch snapped. “We can’t hare off doing merchant’s work. It locks us onto roads that will leave us vulnerable to Jehane’s fleet. We’ve got to reprovision, refuel, dump the casualties who don’t want to stay with the ship on the nearest Station hospital, and run. That’s our only chance.”

“Which brings us back around to the original question,” added Yehoshua drily. “How do we resupply without any means to pay for it?”

Another pause. Finch shifted restlessly in his seat, lancing a brief, resentful glare at the two Ridanis—Pinto and Paisley—who sat opposite him. Gregori looked up at his mother, but her attention had drifted toward the galley. He could only see her profile, but her expression as she watched the obscure shape of Lia moving along a shadowed counter disturbed him with feelings he had no name for.

“Sell the Hierakas Formula,” muttered Finch with a mutinous glance at Paisley. “For supplies.”

Paisley responded by pushing up instantaneously to her feet. “Never! Min Ransome shan’t
never
sell ya Formula. It be ya wrong, min Finch, never you mind what you think, and it would be ya sore kinnas to insult ya memory of ya man as died to see it made free for all to have.”

“Then can you suggest what else we have to trade?” Finch shot back, undaunted by her fierce gaze. “Or perhaps you and min Pinto would volunteer to sell your—ah—services to the curious planetside.”

Pinto jumped up.

“Finch!” Jenny snapped, rising as well at the same time as she reached out to forestall Pinto from punching Finch in the face. “That remark was totally uncalled for. Pinto, sit down.”

Pinto did not sit down. Gaze still fixed on Finch, he answered Jenny. “You can’t expect me to just let that go.”

“Yes, I can,” demurred Jenny. “And I do. We have more serious problems to consider.” She applied a slight, but firm pressure on his arm and he sat, much unwilling. Letting go of him, she turned to smile coldly at Finch. “And perhaps an apology would be in order?”

Finch glowered at the tabletop, looking not quite as sullen as Pinto.

Paisley laughed. “Hurts, don’t it?” she said, but not in any triumphant way. “But it be sure I were already volunteered to sell my services, on Harsh, and it weren’t no happy time for me, that be ya truth.”

Finch glanced up at her, looking at last a little shamefaced. “I forgot about that,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.” And looked down again.

Paisley sat.

“Thank you,” said Jenny with a sigh. She and Yehoshua exchanged a glance fraught with long-suffering complicity.

“But it still doesn’t answer,” Finch muttered, unrepentant, “what we’re going to use to pay for supplies. We’ve only got two shuttles left, since we sent Machiko and his people off in the other one, so we can’t afford to lose one of those. And certainly none of us has any legitimate credit anymore, with or without clips to link into the bank net. I just don’t see what choice we have but to sell the Hierakas Formula. And I
know
,” he added with a swift glance to mollify Paisley, “how Lily—how the captain—feels about it being accessible to every citizen of Reft space.”

“I don’t suppose that it’s occurred to any of you,” said Jenny softly, “that with a warship of this class, and a decent contingent of mercenaries, which we have, we don’t
have
to pay. We can just take what we need.”

Yehoshua smiled slightly. Gregori stopped fidgeting. For once, Finch looked as righteously shocked as Paisley, and they began to protest vocally at the same moment, halting in confusion at the other’s words.

The Mule hissed, long and sharp. “That would be immoral,” it said. “And perfectly human of you. I will have no part in such an enterprise.”

“And in any case,” Pinto pointed out, “the people on Forsaken have never done anything to us.”

Jenny grinned, glancing at Yehoshua again. “But if they had, it would be all right to take what we need by force?”

“B’ain’t
never
right,” exclaimed Paisley.

“Do you expect me to believe,” asked Finch, “that you, or any other tattoos—Ridanis—never stole from the people who weren’t Ridanis while you lived on Station? It’s common knowledge that it’s all right for Ridanis to steal from people who aren’t tattooed, just not from each other.”

“Sure it be ya common knowledge,” replied Paisley scornfully, “cause it be ya easier to believe ya worst o’ us than ya truth. That way it be less burdensome to treat us so bad.”

Finch blushed. It was a little hard to see, because of the duskiness of his skin, but the tightening of his mouth added to his expression of discomfiture.

Yehoshua chuckled. “Hoisted you with that one, comrade.”

Finch shoved back his chair and without a word stood up and stalked out of the mess.

Paisley rose as well, looking abruptly worried, but Jenny caught her eye and shook her head. “Let him go, Paisley,” she said. “It won’t hurt him to dwell a little on his sufferings.”

“But I didna’ mean—” began Paisley.

“Paisley,” interrupted Pinto. “I can’t
begin
to understand how you can have any sympathy for that little bastard, considering how many times he’s made it quite clear how he feels about us filthy tattoos.”

“Because he’s min Ransome’s friend,” said Paisley with dignity, “and because it be ya wrong o’ us to return prejudice with hatred.” She sat down, looking fierce and a little haughty.

Yehoshua applauded softly. Jenny smiled. The Mule said nothing.

“That’s fine,” said Pinto, looking disgusted, “for people like that writer, Pero, but look where he is now.”

“Pinto! It be sore wrong o’ you to speak such o’ ya dead—”

Gregori slipped out from under his mother’s careless touch and off his chair and padded out of the room, leaving behind what bid fair to develop into one of Paisley’s full-blown polemics. That she was the merest slip of a girl, scarcely twice Gregori’s age, seemed to amuse the others, but it depressed him. It was one of the reasons he so rarely spoke up. If they found her opinions, as passionate and generous as they were, more delightful than provoking, and she so old as sixteen, what then would they think of him, a thin sprite of some seven ship’s years, expressing the deep and private thoughts that moved him to wander this ship? Paisley might be oblivious, or immune, to their amusement, but he could never be.

So he went to find the one person who always took him quite seriously, and who never treated him like a child. He went to Medical.

He checked the lab first, but the counters and console bays where Hawk could often be found working were silent and dark. Slipping past the Ridani guard who was always left as a precaution at the Medical door, he padded into the main ward.