The Serrano Connection (106 page)

So when they heard the men talking, she had a few seconds warning. She caught Hazel's eye, jerked her chin up, and walked on. Around the next curve in the path came a pair of men, dressed much as she and Hazel were, though one of them had a bundle on his back. Brun stared straight at the first man, then the second, and tightened her lips. They gave her a short nod, and strode by in silence. Brun felt herself start to shake and lengthened her stride. Hazel grabbed her arm and squeezed, hard. Brun nodded. Neither looked behind as they struggled on up the hill.

They had made it over the first ridge, and halfway up the second, when Brun's breasts began to throb. She glanced at the sky. Drat. The twins would be waking now, beginning to whimper, even if no one had found them before.

"What?" asked Hazel softly. Brun put her hands to her breasts and winced. Hazel said "Swelling?" Brun nodded. Minute by minute, they throbbed more, until she felt she could not stand it . . . but her feet hurt almost as much.

Take your pick, she thought. At least you're out here. And she took as deep a breath as she could of the fresh hill air. She would walk her feet to bloody stubs, and let her breasts explode before she would go back to that miserable nursery.

"You miss your babies?" Hazel asked.

Brun shook her head violently. Hazel looked shocked; Brun regretted her vehemence, but . . . she felt what she felt. If they had been someone else's babies, she might have felt a pang of softness for them, she had liked babies, when someone else took care of them—but not these. She set her face resolutely to the trail and struggled on.

Near sundown they came to the clearing marked on Brun's map. Here they were supposed to be met . . . or she was; whoever it was wouldn't expect Hazel.

The man who stepped out of the shadow of the trees not only didn't expect Hazel, he didn't want her. "I didn't get paid for two," he said roughly. "What are you trying to pull, missy?" Brun glared at him. Then she took the notebook from Hazel and wrote: SHE GOES TOO.

"I wasn't paid . . ." the man began. Brun made the universal signal for money—and saw it recognized, proving once again that humans had a common origin, something she'd been willing to doubt this past year and more. She pointed to the sky, then rubbed her fingers again. Money there, if you get us there. The man spat.

"All right. But I don't want to hear any complaints when it's crowded in the shuttle."

Brun stared around. Shuttle here? This was no shuttlefield. But the man was walking quickly along the shadowed edge of the clearing, and she followed.

"We got us a ways to go, and I guess it's lucky I brung a extra. Hope you can ride." With that, he ducked into the trees and Brun smelled . . . horses.

This was not how she'd planned to ride again. She had imagined herself on one of her father's hunters, galloping over the fields of home. Instead, Brun had to stretch her sore legs on the wide barrel of a brown horse with all the character of a sofa, because Hazel, who had never been on a horse before, had to have a saddle. The man swore he couldn't ride bareback—and if he was used to that armchair for a saddle, no wonder. At least her body had not forgotten that balance.

"By God, you
can
ride," the man said, as she moved up beside him. Brun smiled, thinking nonsmiling thoughts, and he looked over at Hazel. "That's it," he said. Brun glanced over; Hazel looked terrified. She was clutching the knob that stuck up from the front of the saddle as if it could anchor her, and trying to strangle the horse with her legs. Brun caught her eye, and gestured down her own body:
Sit straight, head up, relax your legs
. Hazel straightened.

They rode through the night, meeting no one at all on the trail. Brun shifted as one spot after another wore raw. She had wanted to wear pants again; she had wanted to ride again, but this—she thought of the old saw about being careful what you asked for. The man spoke occasionally: "That way's Lem's cabin." "Over there's the pass to Smoky's place."

When first light began to give shape to the treetops on the slopes above them, their guide slowed. "It's only a tad more," he said. "Just down this slope." At the foot of the slope, they came out of trees and brush to find a long grassy field ending in a steep hill. Brun could not see anything resembling a shuttle. Was this a trap after all? But the man led the way along the edge of the field, and she realized it might be a grass runway. It was longer than it looked; when she glanced back along it, the far end was hidden in ground fog. The hill, as they neared it, revealed a hangar door set into it. That was promising. Set back under the trees was a log cabin with a peaked roof; beyond it was a larger log building, a barn, and in between was an enclosure of peeled poles where two more horses and a cow munched hay.

The man led them up to a gate set into the enclosure, and swung off his horse as if he'd only ridden an hour or so, not all night. Neither Brun nor Hazel could dismount alone. The man had to help them, pushing and tugging. He swore at them. Brun wished for the ability to swear back. She had not been on a horse in years, and in between she'd borne twins—what did he expect after riding all night bareback? She was sure she'd worn all the skin off her thighs and buttocks. As for Hazel, she'd never ridden before; she'd be lucky if she could walk at all in a few hours.

In the cabin, a stocky woman prepared breakfast for all of them. She never looked at them, never spoke, but set plates in front of them and kept them full. Brun raged inwardly, but they could not take all the women on this planet. I will come back, she vowed silently. Somehow . . .

After breakfast, Brun managed to stand up; she gave Hazel a hand. Outside, the man was opening the hangar door, and at last Brun could see what was waiting for them. Her grin broadened. It was a little mixed-purpose shuttle, the same kind she'd been in when Cecelia had sent her back to Rockhouse. She could fly it herself if she had to. She thought briefly of knocking the man on the head and doing just that, but she had no idea how he planned to evade Traffic Control—if this place even had Traffic Control. It did have warplanes, though, and she had no desire to meet them.

With considerable difficulty, Brun helped Hazel up the narrow ladder into the shuttle. The man was already busy at the controls; he glowered when Brun made her way forward and settled herself in the other control seat. "Don't touch anything!" he said sharply. Brun watched. Everything looked much the same as on Corey's ship. Although the names of the measures were strange, she could identify most of the instruments. The man ran down the same sort of checklist.

The little craft bumped its way down the field, engines screaming, gaining speed with every meter. But could it possibly be enough? The trees at the far end approached too rapidly—Brun could remember going much faster than this at Rotterdam. Suddenly, the shuttle rose into the air as if hoisted on a crane . . .

"Short field ability," the man said, grinning. "Surprised you, didn't I? She needs a third less runway, and she can clear a hundred feet when she goes up."

Sun streamed in the cockpit windows; Brun stared avidly at the control panel. Her mind had been so hungry, all this time, for something real, something to do. She glanced back at Hazel; the girl grinned, pointing to the gauges. Yes—a spacer girl, she would have had the same hunger. But now Hazel was looking out and down, at the shadowy folds of hills and valleys receding as they rose. Was this, perhaps, her first planet? Brun had never thought of that. Higher . . . there was a river, winding between hills, with a roll of ground fog like wool resting on the hill to windward. The craft climbed steeply, and the view widened every minute. Over there should be the city they came from, with its spaceport . . . yes. Small—smaller than she expected, though the spaceport had landing space enough for a dozen shuttles.

The radio crackled; their pilot spoke into his headset, but it was so noisy Brun couldn't hear what he said. Higher . . . higher . . . the morning sky that had been a soft bright blue darkened again. The gauge that must be an altimeter had reeled off thousands and ten thousands, but Brun didn't know what the unit of measure was. It neared sixty thousand somethings, and passed it. Then the pilot pulled the nose up even higher, and pushed a button on the left side of the cockpit. Acceleration slammed her back in her seat as a penetrating roar came from behind. The sky darkened quickly to black; stars appeared.

She noticed a streak of sunlit vapor climbing below them; their pilot yelled something into his headset. The vapor trail turned away. The pilot pointed through the front window. Brun peered back and forth, not seeing what he meant, until Hazel tapped her arm. "Ten o'clock, negative thirty . . . their space station." Then she could see it, as its shape passed over a sparkling expanse of white cloud on the bulging planet below. She had been there, on the inside, unable to see . . . and now she was here. Free. Or almost free.

The man handed Brun a headset; she put it on. Now she could hear him. "Changing from lift engines to insystem—we're supposed to rendezvous with something out here. Dunno if it's military or civilian or what. They gave me code words to use."

The craft lurched as he switched from one drive to another, then the artificial gravity kicked in, and she might as well have been sitting in a model shuttle on some planet's surface. Quiet, too, just as it should have been, with only the faint crisp rustle of the ventilation system. She glanced back at Hazel, who was grinning ear to ear. It felt right to her as well, then. She peered out at the stars, burning steadily . . . but she could not recognize any of the geometry. What system was this?

"Might's well take a nap, now she's on auto," the man said. He switched off the banks of instruments useless with this drive, yawned, and hung his headset on a hook. "I'm going to." He closed his eyes and slumped in his seat.

Brun slid her headset down around her neck, but did not follow his example. Too much was at stake.

"I'm really tired," Hazel whispered. "And my legs . . ."

Brun mimed
sleep
at her, and watched as Hazel dozed off. The man was snoring now, snores of such complexity that she was sure he couldn't have faked them. She put out her hand to the controls, and he didn't stir.

So here she was, on her way . . . she touched her knives, reminding herself that she was not going to be recaptured, if anything went wrong. And out there somewhere, Fleet waited. She was sure it would be Fleet; her father would not have risked anything less in taking on a whole planet. She hoped it wasn't far out, and she hoped very much that whatever ships were there did not include one Lieutenant Esmay Suiza. She was not ready to face that, on top of everything else.

An hour passed, and another, and another. Despite herself, she yawned. She would have taken a stimulant if she'd had one; she scolded herself for eating such a big breakfast. Another yawn . . . Her eyes sagged shut, and she struggled to open them, only to yawn again. She looked at her shipmates. The man was snoring in a different pattern now, but just as loudly. Hazel slept neatly as a cat, curled into herself on the bench seat. Brun tried pinching herself, changing position, taking deep breaths . . . but in that steady, warm stillness, she slept in spite of herself.

Brun woke abruptly with the feeling that something was very wrong. They were in free fall . . . but they had been on insystem drive, with the artificial gravity on. The pilot was awake, and changing switch positions on the main board. Brun looked at Hazel, who was also awake, hanging upside down above the bench where she'd slept. She reached back, tapped her arm, and nodded toward the pilot.

"What are we doing?" Hazel asked. Her voice was high with tension.

"End of the line, girlies. I been talking to them over there—" He gestured, and Brun looked out to see a dark shape against the starfield. What it really was, or how far away, she couldn't tell, but she could see the ovoid shape of a warship. Fleet? "I get more from them, for turning you in, than from you, for taking you on. An abomination was one thing—I didn't bargain on a runaway from Ranger Bowie's house."

Not Fleet. Brun's stomach tightened. The pilot smirked at them, and opened his mouth to speak into the headset. Brun uncoiled from her seat, twisting in midair, and slammed both booted feet into the side of his head. Hazel squeaked—no other word for that short alarmed sound, but then pushed off the overhead to get her forearm around the man's neck and hold it against the tall seatback while Brun untangled herself from the cords and wires her attack had landed her in.

"What do I do if he—" Hazel began, when the man jerked against her arm, and then grabbed at her arm and tried to free himself. But he was strapped in, and Brun already had her knife out, and a firm hold on the back of his seat for leverage; she jammed the knife under his ribs and up, just as she had been told. He twisted, struggling, for a moment longer, then slumped . . . that long elephant-skinning knife had the length to reach his heart. Brun stared at Hazel, who was white with shock.

But they had no time for shock. Catching her feet under the copilot's seat, she unhooked the pilot's harness, and started pulling his body out of the seat, pushing it to the back. Drops of blood followed it, floating, dispersing.

"Can you . . . pilot?" Hazel asked. Brun grinned at her and nodded, then clambered into the seat. Hazel climbed over the pilot, still snorting a little but beyond help, and made it into the copilot's seat, strapping herself in quickly.