Price of Ransom (8 page)

An abrupt surge of physical anger ripped through Lily. She had to resist the urge to raise a hand against Aliasing. Until, turning, she saw Lia’s face. The animation, all unconscious, that lit Lia’s face as the young woman contemplated her return to Jehane tempered Lily’s anger. She herself had acted impulsively, going into a riot at Roanoak to find Kyosti. It was no excuse, and yet she recognized that there are times when emotion overwhelms rationality. Sometimes it led to great victories. Sometimes it led to disaster. And she remembered the look she had seen on Alexander Jehane’s face when he had met Lia again on Blessings. Sweetness was not a trait she would ever have identified in Jehane, but that one time—that one time, the way he had commented on Lia’s beauty, she would even have called him tender. The full force of what might be the only authentic emotion Alexander Jehane had ever allowed himself to feel would be hard to resist. She could not bring herself to vent her fury on Aliasing.

“If you did go back to Jehane, what makes you think that his lieutenant Kuan-yin—who, according to Comrade Vanov is the same person who arranged for our deaths, and
yours
and Gregori’s, here—won’t try to kill you again? And succeed next time.”

There was a slight chime at the door, and it slipped open to reveal Jenny. The mercenary had one arm in a sling, bound to her chest. Her face, though clean, was bruised and swollen.

Lia’s back was to the door. “Jehane will protect me,” she said firmly. She turned her head. “Jenny!” And stood up.

Jenny’s expression, beneath the bruises, was a mask, taut and controlled. “You’re leaving with the survivors,” she said at last, as if she had just that moment realized it. “Back to the
Boukephalos
.” Behind her, in the corridor, Gregori loitered; behind him stood Yehoshua, still armed.

“Sit down,” Lily said, gesturing to the chair.

“I’d rather not,” Jenny replied.

“Jenny,” Lia began, pleading, “I never meant—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Jenny snapped, losing her temper. “You made it pretty damn obvious when you let Vanov on board. You almost killed my son.”

“I couldn’t have known,” Lia exclaimed, defending herself with anger. Behind Yehoshua, two Ridanis passed carrying a stretcher. A thin plastine sheet covered the body that lay on it. “
You don’t understand
.”

“You’re wrong.” Jenny’s voice was calm again. She shifted and winced, some pain in her body aggravated by her new stance. “I might have done the same thing, for you.”

Lia began to cry. Silent, and with dignity, but tears coursed down her face, slipping off her jaw to wet the collar of her tunic. Jenny’s lack of reaction was more distressing to Lily than her previous anger.

“You’d better go,” Lily said to Aliasing. “Yehoshua will escort you. You can collect your belongings, and then he’ll take you to the shuttle.”

Lia seemed not to have heard her. “Don’t hate me, Jenny,” she said, soft.

Jenny turned her face away. “I don’t hate you, Lia,” she replied, softer.

Without looking at anyone else, Lia walked out of the room. Gregori backed away from her. Lia’s shoulders shook, as if that tiny, final rejection had finally broken her composure.

Yehoshua, face painfully blank, led her away. The veil of her black hair was the last sight Lily had of her.

“Jenny.” She said the name tentatively.

“Not now.” Jenny’s voice was drawn tight with anguish. She stood, not moving, not speaking, for a long space of time. The angle of her head highlighted a fresh cut, running from the corner of one eye to the cheek beneath, one more legacy of Vanov’s short stay. Finally she turned and without a word went out into the corridor, took Gregori’s hand, and walked away.

Rainbow appeared in the doorway, hesitating. She held a pistol in one hand, by the barrel.

Lily motioned her in. “What’s that? I thought Yehoshua collected all their guns.”

“We found ya one, Captain,” Rainbow explained, holding the pistol out. “It were in the back corner by ya life support console. Some person flung it so hard it dented ya console. Can’t have come there any other way, we reckoned by seeing where it lay.” She shrugged. “I thought you might wish to see it.”

“No.” Lily took a step back, realizing with sudden revulsion that this dull, inert thing must be Vanov’s pistol, flung so far and so hard away from her in that infinity of time given Kyosti inside the window. “No,” she echoed. “Take it away.”

With a brisk nod, Rainbow retreated. The door sighed shut behind her, leaving Lily alone in the captain’s suite.

The silence was for the moment too oppressive. She returned to the other room to check on Kyosti. He did not respond to her entrance. He lay still on the bed, eyes open and dilated. His breathing seemed regular, but it was shallow. Frightened, she tried to find his pulse, but it was faint and slow. His skin seemed uncomfortably cool to her touch.

She jumped up and slapped the com. Within minutes Hawk’s assistant Flower arrived. Her look of concern, incongruous against the wild cheerfulness of the tattoos decorating her face and hands, deepened as she examined him. At last she looked up at Lily.

“I think he be gone catatonic, min Ransome. There be nothing I can do, but watch him and keep him in fluids.”

“What have I done?” whispered Lily.

“B’ain’t nothing you done, Captain,” Flower answered, puzzled. “It be ya shock, likely. It be up to him to come out when his mind can face up to what he done, back there. You just mun be ya patient.”

“My best virtue,” muttered Lily, but Flower did not get the joke. And the only thing that came to Lily’s mind, staring at Kyosti’s inert form, was an old chorale that Bach sang on occasion.

Ich bin’s, ich sollte büssen,

An Händen und an Füssen

Gebunden in der Höll’!

Die Geisseln und die Banden,

Und was due ausgestanden,

Das hat verdienet meine Seel’.

“It is I. I should atone,

My hands and feet

bound, in hell.

The scourges, and the fetters,

and all that Thou didst endure,

that has my soul earned.”

Y
EHOSHUA FELT SOME SYMPATHY
for Aliasing. He had met Alexander Jehane about five years back, and he still remembered vividly the impact of that meeting. Its main result had been to send his cousin Alsayid into a frenzy of revolutionary fervor. Born two years apart to sisters in a large House, the two boys had naturally grown close, with Yehoshua’s practicality tempering Alsayid’s enthusiasms. Jehane had impressed Yehoshua, but Alsayid had drawn him into Jehane’s revolution and eventually into Jehane’s army. It still seemed ironic to Yehoshua that he, not Alsayid, had been given more responsibility and what was in essence—despite Jehane’s official stance against ‘rank’—a higher position within the Provisional Armed Forces. And doubly ironic that Alsayid, the real convert, had died for the cause.

And yet not ironic at all. But Alsayid’s death had destroyed Yehoshua’s faith in Jehane. He knew it was irrational, to assign blame for what had been a tactical failure—the disastrous attempt on Landfall—but his belief in the revolution had clouded over and slowly atrophied over the course of the following months. Lily seemed a more immediate, and involved, leader to him than Jehane; she had been the one to salvage the Landfall expedition and destroy the ship that he considered the cause of Alsayid’s death. Over that time, the
Forlorn Hope
had become his home. He had discovered, slowly and with surprise, that he had no great desire to return to a life of mining at Filistia House. The revolution had changed him enough to make such a return difficult.

So whatever sympathy he felt for Aliasing was tempered by his anger at her for jeopardizing the one future he felt he could look forward to, and by his anger at what her betrayal had done to Jenny. Truth to be told, he was quite happy to see Aliasing go.

She did not speak to him, gathering up her few possessions. A few tears dappled her cheeks, but that was all. She kept her expression tautly controlled. Followed him meekly to the shuttle bay and boarded without incident.

He watched the dark fall of her hair and the loose swirl of her skirts disappear around a corner of the pressurized tube that led to the shuttle, and then he sealed the hatch and left the four Ridani guards to keep an eye on the bay. He even whistled a little, returning to the upper decks.

He found the captain in the outer room of her suite. She waved him in, and he sat down beside Flower on the couch. Lily was standing. Her face had a drawn cast to it, as if she had sustained a shock but was trying to conceal, or overcome it.

“We were discussing the casualties,” she said to Yehoshua. “Flower says that she doesn’t have enough knowledge to help them improve, but that she can maintain their current condition and continue to rehabilitate those who are recovering. The question is whether we should transfer them to Station Hospital on Forsaken or ask the
Boukephalos
to take them. After all, these are heroes of the engagement at Blessings.”

“What about Hawk—” Yehoshua began, and stopped, seeing the expression that shuttered the captain’s face. She looked at Flower, as if she could not bring herself to answer the question.

Flower regarded Yehoshua gravely. “He be gone ya catatonic, min. No telling how or when he might come clear o’ that.”

“I see,” Yehoshua murmured, not sure he did see. He felt mildly guilty that he had called Hawk a psychopath, and yet vindicated at the same time.

“There’s no guarantee,” the captain went on, “that they’ll recover in any case.”

“I’m not sure what other choice we have,” said Yehoshua.

“Take them with us to League space. Find medical care there. Flower can monitor them so far.”

“And if they recover in League space, how many will thank us for taking them so far from home?”

Flower grinned. “Being ya dead be furthest from home I can think on, min. Min Hawk wanted them to go.”

“Min Hawk,” said the captain tonelessly, “had his own ghosts”—she caught on the word as if she had not meant to say it—“to atone for.”

The comment left an uncomfortable silence in the room. Yehoshua broke in briskly, more out of compassion for Lily’s pain than to cover his own discomfort.

“This all presupposes that we can convince the
Boukephalos
to retreat without engaging us, get supplies at Forsaken, and get across uncharted vector space to your League. On the other hand, Pinto and the Mule ran that last damn vector on
manual
.” He ran a hand through his silvering hair. “I’m getting too old for this.” Then laughed, exchanging looks with Flower. “Unless this Formula is true, in which case I won’t be getting
older
for a while yet.”

“You don’t believe it?” Lily asked, a little defensive, perhaps.

“Do you? Really?”

For the first time, he had the relief of seeing the barest smile crack her grim facade. “No, not really,” she admitted. “But I expect we’ll get used to the idea eventually.” She turned and strode with abrupt energy to the door. Yehoshua and Flower both rose. “I want bridge and Engineering back on as soon as Rainbow is—finished. We don’t have any time to waste.” She paused. “Then meet me in detention. I want to ask Comrade Trey one question before we put her on the shuttle. Flower, return to Medical.”

“Yes, min.”

“What question?” Yehoshua asked.

“I want to know what Kyosti meant when he said that she smelled of Robbie.”

She left, and he followed Flower out behind her. Got a verbal estimate from Rainbow of the time until the bridge was usable again—he did not care to check for himself. Put all personnel on ready and, curious now, made his way down to detention.

The captain was waiting for him outside the cell that held Comrade Trey. They observed her through the one-way for a few minutes. She sat on the edge of the bunk, shoulders slumped, hands covering her face. She breathed; otherwise, she did not move.

Her head jerked up as the door opened. Her eyes had the white edge of fear, and she caught at the thin blanket as if to shield herself with it. Then, registering her two visitors, her face relaxed slightly, but she remained tense.

“I just have one question to ask you,” said Lily quietly. “Then you’ll be escorted to the shuttle and transferred back to the
Boukephalos
with the others.”

“You’re just going to let us go?” asked Trey, not believing it. She had a broad face, slightly flat with dusky skin; handsome in its own way partly because of the mildness that even now showed through her agitation. “The
Boukephalos
has orders to bring you in.”

“Your Commander is dead. What will your First Officer do?”

“I don’t know,” Trey admitted. “I’m nominal First. This expedition was put together very hastily, and people from several different ships were pulled in to cover it.”

“You didn’t know Comrade Vanov before?”

“No,” Trey seemed about to say something more, perhaps about Vanov, and then thought better of it.

“Is Dr. Prachenduriyang still on board?” Lily asked.

“Prachen …? The only doctor on board I know of is Tzu.”

Lily glanced at Yehoshua, as if the look shared information that he ought to know. “I suppose that settles it. The casualties will stay with us.”

“If I may,” said Yehoshua. Lily nodded. “I’d like to know why Comrade Trey is being so very forthcoming. Under the circumstances.”

“Comrade Trey,” said that woman with a mild hint of irony, “is appalled at the actions of her former Commander and is not entirely sure she wants to return to the
Boukephalos
. If this is what Jehane’s revolution has come to—killing children—I want no part of it.”

“Did you know Robert Malcolm?” Lily asked abruptly.

Trey’s face changed. Yehoshua recognized her expression. It wasn’t hard. A memory mixed of sorrow and joy: she had loved him, once, or loved him still. How the sorrow fit in he could not guess.

“You’re Maitreyi, aren’t you?” said Lily, and she unexpectedly took two steps forward and knelt before Trey. “He loved you.”

Trey stared at Lily as if Lily’s soul had just been illuminated before her. “You knew him,” she breathed. She put out her hands and Lily took them in hers, an act of such unconscious sisterhood that it made Yehoshua feel awkward and intrusive.