Starpilot's Grave: Book Two of Mageworlds (30 page)

Read Starpilot's Grave: Book Two of Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: Starpilot's Grave: Book Two of Mageworlds
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The courier ship began the graceful maneuver designed to take it within visual range of all sides of the target vessel. Several minutes in, the copilot spoke up again.
“We’re picking up something anchored to the ventral surface—a small craft of some kind.”
The pilot was already feeding close-range sensor data to
Naversey’s
on-board comps. “Looks like Mistress Hyfid was right,” he said after a moment. “Analysis makes the additional contact a Pari-class short-range surveyor-scout. Probably belonged to
Ebannha
’s boarding party.”
“Good,” said Lieutenant Vinhalyn. “This is where we’re supposed to be. Make ready to rendezvous.”
The pilot looked uneasy. “We’ve got a mint-condition Magebuilt Deathwing out there. Are you sure you want to get that close?”
Vinhalyn’s lips tightened, and he gave the pilot a withering glance. “A
Pari
-class scout has no hyperspace engines,” he said, “and no guns. If this one’s crew is still alive, they are surely desperate by now. Take us in.”
The pilot shrugged. “Have it your way. Coming in.”
Soon
Naversey
had matched course and speed with the Deathwing. The courier ship hovered just above the
Pari-
class survey vessel clinging to the dark ship’s hull, their relative motion zero.
Vinhalyn nodded to himself—a quick, decisive motion. “Time for somebody to suit up and get over there,” he said. “Mistress Hyfid, will you accompany me?”
“Of course,” she said. She didn’t look at the waiting Deathwing as she spoke.
 
Several minutes later, moving awkwardly in their pressure suits, Llannat and Vinhalyn approached the airlock of the survey ship. The lock’s outer door stood open, but the inner one was closed; they entered and, cycled through to the ship’s interior. A quick search of all the compartments on the small vessel showed it deserted, with power levels at minimum. The log recorder’s last entry had been made two days before: “Transferring operations to salvage ship.”
“Wonderful,” Llannat muttered. “They’re aboard the Deathwing. I used to have nightmares about those things when I was a kid, just from the holopix in the history texts, until my mother told me they’d all gotten blown to pieces in the War.”
Vinhalyn’s voice came to her on the suit-to-suit comm link. “Cheer up. If this vessel’s crew managed to cross over without destroying both ships, we can probably do the same.” She heard the click that meant he was switching in the suit-to-ship link. “Survey ship deserted—crew appears to have transferred aboard the Mage vessel. I intend to follow. If we haven’t returned in two hours, use your best judgment.”
They cycled out through the survey ship’s airlock and clambered down onto the black hull of the Deathwing. Their magnetic boots clicked and shuffled as they made their way across the metal surface to the Mageship’s ventral airlock.
It was closed.
“Now what?” said Llannat. She’d never liked pressure-suit work all that much; being this close to deep space and hard vacuum made her twitchy, prone to the irrational fear that the laws of the universe would suddenly decide to repeal themselves and the plates in her boot soles would become no more magnetic than ordinary shoe leather. “How are we going to get in?”
“There should be a secondary access port around here somewhere,” Vinhalyn replied. He pointed to a spot a few feet away from the main lock, where a row of angular yellow symbols stood out in sharp contrast to the sleek black hull. “And that looks like it.”
He click-shuffled over to the area with the symbols on it and bent clumsily to put one pressure-gloved hand onto the deck. Llannat saw him push down against the hull, then twist—and a small but workable hatch opened in the side of the ship.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “That yellow writing says, ‘Press here and rotate.’”
“Well, yes,” Vinhalyn admitted. The reservist-historian was already climbing in through the hatch, but the suit-to-suit link brought his voice back to her clearly. “Rotate leftward, to be precise. Of course, the important point was that last symbol on the end … .”
By now he had disappeared into the small airlock. Llannat, following him through the hatch, said nervously, “What about the last symbol?”
“Ah, yes … a very interesting character, linguistically speaking. In the older dialects of Eraasian—which served as the spacefarer’s common-talk for most of the Mageworlds—it represents the imperative premonitory suffix.”
“The what?”
Llannat and Vinhalyn were standing together now inside a half-size airlock, or at least one that would have been half-size on a Republic ship. The wall of the lock was covered with dials and other old-style monitoring devices, the unfamiliar notation on their glassed-in faces illuminated by the lights of the pressure suits.
“A syllable tacked onto the last word of a warning or command,” Vinhalyn said as he frowned over the rows of dials. “In spoken Eraasian, it was used to emphasize an order by raising the possibility of negative consequences: ‘Do this or else!’ In the written language—especially when we take into consideration the explicit directions to rotate the latch mechanism
leftward,
and the Mageworlders’ known predilection for incorporating self-destruct mechanisms into their vessels—”
Llannat glanced back at the now-closed outer door of the lock. “I get your point,” she said. “Wonderful language, Eraasian. I’m glad you speak it.”
Vinhalyn peered more closely at one of the dials. “It is, alas, an academic knowledge only … Ah. Here we are. No pressure inside the Deathwing, either. This won’t be as tricky as I was afraid it would be.”
He pushed and rotated another yellow-labeled plate on the Deathwing’s bulkhead—Llannat didn’t bother asking what this one said; she didn’t really want to know—and the inner door of the minilock cycled open. They climbed out into a narrow, slightly curving passageway near the main airlock.
Llannat played the light of her suit around the deck and the bulkheads: a lot of standard shipboard construction—basic solutions to basic engineering problems, she supposed; a lot of notices and labels in the Eraasian script; and a chalked arrow drawn on the metal paneling at about eye level, pointing to the right.
“There we are,” she said. “Looks like our boarding party left us a trail.”
“Then by all means let us follow it,” said Vinhalyn. They headed down the passageway to the right. Each time the route branched, another chalk-marked arrow appeared to show them the way.
“Where do you think they are?” Llannat asked.
“From the number of Eraasian warning signs and don’t-even-touch-this-without-a-proper-clearance notices, it looks like we’re heading toward the power plant.”
“Oh,” she said. She frowned into the darkness ahead of her. “Is that a light over there?”
“It does look like one,” said Vinhalyn. “And our destination appears to be Main Engineering Control, or the equivalent for this vessel.”
Llannat shook her head, although she knew the gesture was useless inside the concealment of a p-suit’s helmet. “I hope our friends aren’t getting ready to twist something the wrong way.”
“So do I, Mistress Hyfid … . Let us proceed quietly now, to avoid precipitating any rash actions.”
They went the rest of the way down the corridor in silence, and through the open doorway into what Llannat presumed was the main engine control room of the Deathwing. Several figures in Space Force standard-issue pressure-suits turned to face the entrance as she and Vinhalyn came in.
One of the suited figures had ensign’s stripes on his helmet. He came hurrying forward, waving a hand as he did so at somebody else outside Llannat’s range of vision.
“Put up the energy lance, Chief,” he said. “These two are some of ours.”
Then, as if remembering himself at the last minute, he came to a full stop and saluted. “Ensign Tammas Cantrel, late of RSF
Ebannha,
now of—of whatever this thing’s called when it has a name. And could one of you people please tell me just what the hell is going on out there in the Net?”
 
GALCEN: THE RETREAT INFABEDE SECTOR: RSF
SELSYN-BILAI;
RSF
FEZRISOND
 
W
HEN DAWN came to the Retreat, General Ochemet was still standing on the tower wall. The light that washed over the mountains went from pearly grey to pink to a warm yellow glow, without bringing a similar warmth to Ochemet’s heart. Prime Base was a long way from the mountains, six hours by aircar at least. Even if he left now—assuming that Master Ransome intended to let him leave, after all but kidnapping him in the first place—he might not get back in time to avert disaster.
Footsteps on the stone behind him made him turn around. One of the senior apprentices had come up onto the tower with a mug and a hotpot of steaming cha‘a on a wooden tray. The cha’a in the mug was already cool enough to drink. After his long night’s watch Ochemet took it gladly, in spite of his dark thoughts about the Master of the Guild.
He finished the cha’a in a couple of gulps and held out the empty mug for more. “I need to get back to Prime as soon as I can. What’s the news?”
The apprentice shook her head. “Nothing that I can tell you,” she said as she filled his mug. “Master Ransome sends his apologies for not providing a proper breakfast, and he wants you to come with me as soon as you’ve had enough cha’a.”
He does, does he? Arrogant bastard
. Ochemet put the mug back onto the apprentice’s tray beside the hotpot.
Galcen’s in danger—he knows it; hell, he
admits
it!
—
and he’s playing games with me for some reason of his own
.
Still, as long as Ransome controlled all the ways in and out of the Retreat, Ochemet knew that he didn’t have much choice. He followed the apprentice down the tower stairs to the lower ramparts, where an Adept was waiting. Ochemet recognized the young man who had met him and Captain Gremyl at the landing field, only a few weeks ago.
“Here he is,” said the apprentice. “Now what do I do, Master Tellyk?”
Tellyk gave the apprentice a brief smile. Ochemet supposed it was meant to be encouraging. “Take the tray down to the kitchen. Then go join the rest of your group.”
The apprentice hurried off.
Ochemet went with his new guide still farther into the center of the fortress, along hallways and down stairs that grew steadily narrower and rougher in their construction. He guessed that Tellyk was taking him down a considerable way below the surface. The last turning brought them through a heavy door—blastproof, from the looks of it—into a large room full of detector screens and status boards. Adepts in plain black were busy on all sides; monitoring readouts, punching in orders and code strings, talking over comm links in low, earnest voices.
Operations Control,
Ochemet thought
. State-of-the-art too. What else do they have in here that I don’t know about?
Master Ransome was there as well, staff in hand, the dark cloak he’d worn last night on the ramparts swirling about his ankles as he strode forward.
“Tellyk,” he said. “Are the apprentices away safely?”
The younger Adept checked his chronometer. “The last of them should be leaving about now. The group leaders know the drill; they’ll be out of Retreat territory by local noon, and scattered all over the planet by sunset.”
“Good,” said Ransome. “We’ll make certain no one has time to look for them today, or tomorrow either.”
Ochemet took a deep breath and broke into the conversation. “I’m glad to hear that your emergency evacuation plans are working properly—”
And how long have you had those in place
? “—but if the danger is that imminent I must go back to Prime Base at once.”
Ransome was already shaking his head. “I’m afraid it’s too late, General. The Mage warfleet is in the system, and Prime is already in their hands.”
 
Captain Natanel Tyche, SFPI, looked across the dining table at the two people Galcen had sent him to collect. Outside in the
Selsyn
’s docking bay, the sounds of armed conflict continued. Here in the common room of Tyche’s long-range recon vessel, however, things were relatively quiet. The ship’s interior lights were on dim, and—except for the pilot and the copilot, several compartments away—nobody remained on board to overhear what might be said.
Gamelan Bandur had slipped his hand-blaster back up his sleeve, but he still looked dangerous, a grizzled hard case with service ribbons from every rough spot since the Sack of Ilarna. Most of his attention seemed to be given over to the fighting outside. CC1 Ennys Pardu, on the other hand, was looking directly at Tyche with a challenging expression.
“I know you, Nat Tyche,” she said at last. “And you certainly ought to know me.”
The face and the voice together jogged Tyche’s memory. He and Pardu—whose name was not Pardu at all—had gone through some of Space Force’s more specialized training together.
“Rosel Quetaya!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“My job,” she said. She nodded toward Bandur. “Haven’t you figured out yet who he is?”
Tyche shook his head. “Just somebody I’ve got orders to pick up and take home to Galcen.”
“Well, he’s the guy who gives the orders,” she said. “Commanding General Jos Metadi himself.”
Under the circumstances, Tyche didn’t think she was lying. He glanced over at Bandur, who was looking amused and—now that Quetaya had brought up the subject—distinctly familiar.
Damn. She’s right. It is him
.
“Nevertheless,” Tyche said doggedly, “I have orders from Galcen to pick up both of you and take you back to Prime.”
Metadi gestured in the direction of the docking bay. “I’d say your orders just got overtaken by events. Captain, do you have any idea at all what’s going on out there?”
“Not much more than you do,” Tyche said. “Some people who claim to be acting for Admiral Vallant appear to have seized control of the ship. Now that
my
people have achieved their main objective—” He nodded at Metadi and Quetaya. “—I can start taking care of that problem next.”
“You do that, Captain,” said Metadi. “And get me a hi-comms link to Galcen. I want to find out what has Perrin so worried he had to send in the Infantry.”
“We’ll both report, General,” said Tyche. “The situation here being what it is.”
He punched the button on the bulkhead comm link to the scout’s cockpit. “Tyche here. I need a hi-comm link to Prime HQ, top priority.”
“Hi-comms, aye.” There was a pause. “No joy on hi-comms, sir. They’re down hard. Galcen doesn’t answer.”
“Double-check your equipment and try again. Let me know when you get through. Tyche out.”
He clicked off the link. “I don’t like this,” he said.
“Neither do I,” said Metadi. “
Selsyn
’s been going back and forth between Galcen and Infabede for a long time now; the warrant officers’ wardroom was a prime source for gossip from all over the sector. Everybody on board knew that something out here was going sour—too many good people had been putting in for transfers or deciding to take early retirement—but nobody said anything about mutiny. In fact, the usual theory was misappropriation of government funds.”
“Oh, there was that, too,” Quetaya said. She was looking pleased with herself, Tyche noted. “I may not have gotten enough out of the
Selsyn
’s data banks to hang Valiant with, but I certainly got enough to make the rope.”
She paused. “And it wasn’t just funds, it was property. Arms and armaments, to be precise.”
“Is he building a private fleet?” Tyche wondered.
“What for?” Metadi said. “He’s got all the Space Force in this sector already.”
Quetaya, meanwhile, was shaking her head. “No fleet—all the matériel passes on to somewhere else. I can’t track it any farther from here.”
The bulkhead link clicked on again. “We’ve run self-tests on the hi-comms, sir,” said the pilot’s voice. “They check out fine. It’s the links and relays that aren’t working.”
“Keep on trying,” said Tyche, and clicked the speaker off. He turned back to Metadi and Quetaya. “It looks like hi-comms are down hard. We may have to wait until we hit Galcen to straighten all this out.”
“Are you a betting man, Captain?” the General asked.
“I’m afraid not. In my line of work, it doesn’t pay.”
“Too bad. I was going to bet you fifty credits that we don’t go back to Galcen.”
“My orders—”
Metadi snorted. “—aren’t worth a damn anymore,” he finished. “Perrin Ochemet found something on his desk he didn’t want to handle, that’s all. Mutiny, on the other hand—that’s serious. I intend to deal with it myself, here and now.”
 
Mutiny works fast if it works at all,
Ari thought.
If this was going to come off, we would have heard something back from the others by now.
Except for Ari and the JG who had brought him there in the first place, the ready room for RSF
Fezrisond’
s fighter detachment had been empty for some time. The JG had a blaster from the fighter det’s weapons locker, but as time passed and Ari made no attempt to break away, he’d transferred his worried expression to the door instead.
I don’t blame him. As soon as the dust clears enough for the winners to count heads, somebody is going to come here looking for us.
Ari thought about the prospect for a moment and decided that he didn’t like it at all. The
Fezzy’s
fighter det might be right about Admiral Vallant, or they might not—after taking his own impressions of the man into consideration, Ari rather thought that they were—but if their coup failed, nobody was going to believe that the ship’s head medic had been keeping disloyal company under compulsion.
In which case, Rosselin-Metadi, you’ve twiddled your thumbs in here long enough. It’s time to say good-bye.
Standing up, he stretched his arms and legs, then wandered over to the door of the ready room and laid a hand against the lockplate. When the door didn’t open, he started working noisily at the edge of the plate with his thumbnail.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you shouldn’t be doing that.” The voice came from behind Ari. “Just sit back down, all right?”
Ari turned, his hands raised to shoulder height, and looked into the business end of the blaster, pointed directly into his face from not more than arm’s length away. He shrugged.
“Oh, well,” he said. “It was worth a try.”
In the next breath he swept his arms inward, so that his right hand caught the inside of the JG’s wrist at the same time as his left hand struck the blaster away to the right. The JG fired, but the bolt whined through the air to one side of Ari’s skull and sizzled against the bulkhead behind him. Ari didn’t waste any time; he made a quick forward snap-kick to the other man’s belly, and the blaster went skittering across the deck as the JG collapsed.
Ari stooped and retrieved the weapon, then went back to prying up the lockplate. He worked quickly, since it wouldn’t be long before the man on the deck was good for something besides gasping for air. He didn’t think he’d done any permanent damage; nevertheless, his actions might be somewhat resented.
Fortunately, the ready room hadn’t been designed for holding prisoners. As soon as he’d pulled the plate loose the door slid open with a click.
He paused for a moment on the threshold. “I wish you and your friends all the luck in the galaxy,” he said to the still-helpless JG. “But I don’t think you’re going to get it.”
The door of the ready room slid closed again behind him. He paused in the empty corridor to take stock of his situation.
On the plus side, he was out of custody and the blaster was a Space Force Standard with a full charge, more than enough to shoot his way out of trouble if he needed to. On the minus side, he didn’t have any idea where he ought to go next. Heading for sick bay wasn’t going to do him much good—anybody looking for him was bound to try there first—and his own quarters probably weren’t any better.
Wherever I go, chances are I’ll walk right into a reception committee from one side or the other. And if Vallant wants me for a hostage, then this whole ship is a trap.
Which means there’s only one place left.
He turned and began walking quickly in the direction of the lower level of
Fezrisond
’s docking bay. Nobody was around—
Not surprising, he thought; all the pilots who aren’t off somewhere helping vallant take over the sector are busy trying to take over the ship instead
—and the lockplate at the underbay entrance hadn’t been tampered with. His medical override brought the door open smoothly, and he stepped inside.

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