WARP world (5 page)

He waited for her reply.

“I guess so,” Ama said after a pause. Her bare thigh was pressed against the transom. If Corrus or his pet monster made a move, she could always dive overboard.

Corrus tossed his head back and laughed, “Look at you! So nervous. Come now, I’ve heard tales of your Port House antics. Timidity doesn’t suit you.”

“What do you want?”

The laugh stopped. “The better question is: what do
you
want?”

“To keep my license. To keep sailing and earning coin, as I was promised I could.”

“And I want that for you as well.” Corrus smiled at her tilted head. “I want everyone to do their jobs, make an honest living, stay in line with the laws. I want peace, Ama. But,” he sighed dramatically, “there are those who want to keep all of us from getting what we want. Traitors in our midst. Kenda who defy the will of the gods and jeopardize the well being of their own kind. Remnants from a less civilized past who would undo the unity our beloved Shasir’kia brought to the land. And I would search them out, expose them and see that they were properly corrected, if I could. But, as you know, your kind can be…secretive.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do. Don’t you, Constable Dagga?” Corrus asked.

“Buncha filthy, sneaky water rats,” Dagga said.

“I’m not a traitor or a heretic; my brother is a Shasir’dua. I attend the—”

“I know all about your brother. He’s a fine example for all of us. No,” Corrus placed his hand on the wheel, “I’m not accusing you, I’m asking for your help. You’re a devout believer, obviously, but among those you associate with, well, I’m sure you hear things, see things. All I’m asking is for you to keep listening, keep watching, and then come to me, as a friend, and share what you know.”

He tightened his grip on the wheel and inhaled deeply.

“Gods above it must be invigorating, being out on the water all day. The freedom,” he sighed again, a lock of hair slipped out of place, “how I envy you! But, I’m getting carried away. You watch and listen, tell me what you see and hear, and I,” he knocked on the wheel, “will make sure that you stay free and sailing.”

“You want me to spy for you?” Ama’s eyes were dark, she fought to keep her fists unclenched. “You want me to spy on my own people?”

“I want you to help your people. I want you to protect them from those who would force me to use less civilized measures to keep order.”

“Like burning boats?” She regretted the words the moment they slipped out.

“Yes. Like that,” he replied, the friendly tone seeping out of his voice.

“No.”

“Think about this Amadahy.”

“I have.” She kept one eye on Dagga, “I said no. You’re not my friend and I’m not yours. I’ll follow your rules but that’s all you can make me do.”

“Sure about that?” Dagga muttered.

Judicia Corrus tipped his head to one side then the other, “Well, I had to try, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Stubborn.” He lunged forward without warning, until his nose was almost touching hers. “Just like your mother.”

Ama gasped, which elicited another gleaming smile, this one predatory.

“You…” Ama’s heartbeat sped up. She tried to move but Dagga’s hand clamped on her elbow and held her in place.

“Stubborn, proud, secretive, yes, you’re just like her.” Corrus said, then smoothed the undisciplined lock of hair back into place. “But perhaps you have slightly more concern for your family than she did, hm? Why don’t you take some time to think about my offer?”

“Get off my boat,” Ama said, her voice barely restrained.

“Your boat, yes, she’s a beauty,” Corrus said, then turned to Dagga. “Let’s leave our friend to consider her future. Oh, and Amadahy, if news of this friendly chat should reach any other ears, then those ears would find themselves at the mercy of my Head Constable. Understood?”

Ama’s heart felt as if it had stopped beating. She nodded, unable to speak.

“Good!” Corrus strolled away as casually as if he were in his own home.

Dagga released Ama’s elbow with a shove, pulled a match from his shirt pocket and struck it on the cask of grint. He held the flame in front of Ama’s face, she leaned away from the light to keep her dathe hidden. Dagga let the match burn right down to the end, to the tips of his finger and thumb, without flinching. When the flame died, he placed the blackened stick on the helm, worked up a mouthful of spit and hacked it on the deck.

“Thirty days, Amadahy,” Corrus called out from the stairs, without looking back. “Thirty days.”

She watched the men leave until the night swallowed them. Then she hurried below deck, to her quarters, where she re-fastened her nove with trembling fingers.

“Rutting Judicia,” she cursed.

She thought of Dagga, pawing through the insides of her beloved
Naida
, and was filled with an urge to dive overboard again and scrub herself clean.

Had they been watching her? What if Dagga had shown up while she was still onboard? She grabbed her knife off the small table in the corner and clutched the hilt.

Thirty days.

She couldn’t tell Fa or her brothers about Corrus’s threat, or she would put them all in danger.

Overhead, the lantern painted the small berth a dismal orange. Ama sighed, as she looked around at her home. What were her choices? Whether she married or not, it would mean giving up the
Naida
and everything she lived for, with no way to ensure Corrus would leave her alone. If she could make enough coin, if she could only do that, then she could run, take herself and the
Naida
out of Corrus’s reach. Beyond the Rift Tribu, if it came to that.

Thirty days.

Or she could betray her own people.

She stared at her mother’s likeness; Corrus’s words filled her head. No one in the family talked much about the suicide but Ama remembered, vividly, the last day she had seen her mother. She was five; it was her first day at the Lesson House. It would also be her last. She was folding her lesson sheet into a paper boat and gazing out the window, dreaming of distant lands, when her mother appeared, the seed winds whipping her hair in a frenzy. Her mother’s smile was sad. She touched her hand to her heart, then her forehead, the Kenda gesture for love that transcends words, then knelt down next to a large stone, removed her nove, and left it there.

“Amadahy!” The Lesson Master’s sharp voice called her to attention, and she looked away from the window.

When she looked back, her mother was gone. Ama never saw her again.

Jumped, off the bluffs, downriver from the docks, witnesses said. Swept away forever by the river below. People said it was no surprise, Colwyn Kalder had never been happy.

Was it true? Or was there more to the story, as Corrus had intimated.

“I won’t let him,” Ama whispered, determination edging back into her voice. She closed off the lantern and lay down on her bed. She didn’t know how, yet, but this was her home and no one would take that away from her.

Lugging the Outer to shore had been a chore for the troopers. Once he had regained consciousness, the real work had begun, and that was proving even more difficult.

“Talk, damn you!” a trooper growled, prodding at the native.

Their first acquisition was a short, stubby man of indeterminate age, who murmured fearfully but who spoke only in unintelligible bursts, no matter how roughly he was handled.

Samples of live conversation were necessary to help tune the implanted translators, known informally as
chatterers
, which they all wore. No matter how fitfully the native gasped and rasped, though, it was obvious he had no language and the best he could manage was disconnected sounds. One of the troopers raised a rifle butt and Seg, finally deciphering the clues, raised his hands to stop him.

He motioned for the man to open his mouth wide and when the prisoner complied he looked inside with a knowing nod.

“He can’t speak properly, you halfwits.” He gestured to the Outer’s mangled tongue. Whether it was a birth defect or the result of some form of primitive punishment was impossible to say. “You’ve abducted a partial mute.”

This was not the most promising omen for his first venture across the warps. So far the operation had been short and simple. They had gathered a great deal of radio chatter, almost entirely communications based. The inhabitants of this world obviously didn’t go in for transmission entertainment–a notable point, which Seg had filed away. The gathered data revealed that the technology level on this world was generally low, speaking to either a technocratic upper class, or a pattern of cultural divisions between nation states, some possessing more modern accouterments than their primitive neighbors. However, it was still too early to say.

Accurate tuning of the chatterers was impossible from broadcast communications alone. Or perhaps it was possible but his people would never know how to achieve it–such were the failings of stolen technology. Nevertheless, the data from the chatterer had suggested a complex, nuanced language that seemed adjective-heavy, indicating an artistic or religious bent.

Perfect. Seg felt there was a rich mine to be plumbed here, and he was as eager as the recon squad to start digging into it.

“So what do we do, boss?” a trooper asked Kerbin.

“De-pop,” she answered, tapping the butt of her rifle against the sheathed knife on her hip.

“Wait,” Seg said, holding up a hand. He looked at the native cowering on the ground, making noises that were obviously pleas for mercy. It wasn’t pity that drove him to stop the execution, he assured himself, merely calculation of the odds. Each abduction of a native involved the risk of exposure, and if the squad had a resource at hand they needed to make full use of it. “Even with the defect, I can work with this. Get your cretins away from him, Kerbin. Signalman, I’ll need your assistance.”

Seg crouched down in front of the native and switched the chatterer on. He could tweak it based on the responses he was getting, he was sure. It would take a while longer to extract language this way, but he was nothing if not patient, especially in the face of potential wealth.

“I need you to work the modulation,” he explained to the comm operator. “We’ll be using verbal and non-verbal, and I will provide missing elements of sound where possible. It will give us a rough working approximation of his language.”

“Whatever,” the comm operator said, grabbing up his equipment while casting a sideways glance to his fellow troopers. Seg didn’t miss the look that broadcasted the comm operator’s feelings about Theorists and their penchant for what so many of his ilk considered esoteric nonsense.

After three hours of patient exchanges between himself and the Outer, Seg managed to establish a rapport.

Welf
, that’s what they called themselves. Surreptitious observation combined with the modulated chatterer allowed the troops to pick up a rudimentary understanding of the local language. He wasn’t sure if Welf was a species term, tribal/national term, or a caste term, but it was a start.

Seg conceded that he had gained as much information from the native as was possible under the circumstances. A trooper motioned for him to stand back, raised a combat blade and dispatched the Outer with a flick of steel. With his boot, he pushed the body aside, then buried it in the shallow grave that had been prepared, covered the grave with greenery, and rejoined the rest of the squad. By the time the body might be discovered, the squad would be a safe distance away.

The Outer was of no further use to the mission and was too feeble and simple to make any sort of useful caj on their World–but the death bothered Seg in a way that he couldn’t quite define. The universe was harsh and unforgiving, and his World, the apex world across all dimensions, survived on the basis of capture and sacrifice. It was the nature of things, though wasteful. He had seen death before, in the arenas, from a distance, but he had never seen a man bleed out right in front of him, with all the associated sights, sounds and smells. The body had still been twitching as he had walked away from it.

Such was the nature of this work, though, and Seg reminded himself that the ensuing raid, once he gathered the necessary information, would be far from bloodless.

“We have to make track,” Kerbin said, interrupting Seg’s thoughts. “If the local primitives haven’t noticed your pet mute went missing yet, they will soon enough.” She tapped a button on her wrist; a holographic display sprung up and floated between them. “It’s your show, but I recommend we cut north and track along this river.”

“Why?” Seg asked, studying the map.

“Because,” she said, in a voice that reminded Seg of someone trying to explain why the shielded sky was copper to a small child, “
Outers
like this run to the rivers. We can move down, acquire one that actually talks, and then get on with our business.”

“No.” Seg’s eyes remained on the map.

“No?” she asked, shaking her head.

He had no time for interdepartmental prejudices. “No, not north, scroll northeast,” he said, pointing to the display. “How far did your survey drone go?”