Read The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds (36 page)

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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She reached up above her head and cut in the overrides.
The
’Hammer
surged to the side before picking up her forward acceleration again. Beka frowned: the engines were a bit skewed.
“Jump speed,” she told the ship. “That’s all I ask.”
Another warship showed in the forward screen, coming up fast toward visual range. She checked its position.
Hell. It’s sitting right on our jump point.
She cut and spun left and downward to find another point.
Give me room to run and I won’t care about the calculations—I’ll jump blind if I have to, just let me get velocity!
The maneuver flashed more alarm lights from the engine readouts: Tube One was fluttering on the edge of burnout already. Another Darvelline fighter zipped past, shooting as it went. The power-level indicators for the
’Hammer’s
weapons bobbled in reply.
At least we’re still shooting back.
The starboard engine went out, then cut back in at half-thrust. She bit her lip in frustration, and cut power in the port engine to keep from spinning out of control with the off-center push. Once more, the acceleration readout slowed.
She bit her lip again, harder.
I
have to do something. The engines aren’t good for more than a few seconds longer, and I’m nowhere near up to jump speed
.
Any time now, she knew, one of the Darvelline cruisers would come alongside, match speeds, and pull
Warhammer
into a docking bay with tractor beams. Then they’d cut through the hull, there’d be a brief fight on board the
’Hammer,
and everything would be over.
But they won’t get me alive
.
Or Nivome.
She shifted a little in her seat—even that small movement made her wound throb—and patted the blaster at her side.
‘He
has little enough time,’ the Prof said. He just didn’t tell me I wouldn’t have any more than Nivome did.
“We’ll make it.”
Beka startled. The voice had come from the copilot’s seat. She glanced over at the Adept. Llannat’s eyes were still closed and she sounded bone-weary, but she looked nowhere near as close to death as she had only a few minutes before.
“We’ll make it,” Llannat repeated. “I met myself, and I was older.” The Adept exhaled on a long breath, and her features relaxed into the smoothness of sleep.
Wonderful
, thought Beka.
At least I know it can be done.
She looked out the cockpit window at the stars. The idea taking shape in her mind made her skin prickle.
I think I
am crazy.
But they can’t block that jump point, for sure. Now all I need is the velocity
.
Beka spun the
’Hammer
around on its vertical axis, and fired the engines one more time.
The readouts flickered and went red. She pushed the throttles farther. The frame of the ship began to shake and vibrate, but the control panel showed acceleration picking up.
More throttle. The rear sensors started coming up with garbage—shards of metal, that would be, sloughing off the engines. All around her, the ship started to make a strange, almost subaudible noise, one no spacer should ever have to listen to: the sound of realspace engines destroying themselves from the inside out.
Beka felt like crying. Instead, she looked at the velocity readout. Yes, there it was, an increase that was more than the crippled engines could account for.
She looked ahead. It was going to be close. But already the central star of the Darvelline system was taking up more and more space in the cockpit window. No warship would sit on her jump point this time.
“Bee!” shouted her brother’s voice over the internal comm. “Bee! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She laughed aloud. “Just one more crazy stunt, big brother—maybe the last one ever. Put the guns on automatic and come on up front for the ride.”
By the time Ari’s heavy footsteps and Jessan’s lighter ones sounded on the cockpit deckplates, she’d already blacked out the windows against the Darvelline sun’s increasing light. “Can’t do that for the bubbles,” she said without turning her head away from the velocity indicator. “Gunners like their visuals too much. But anybody who’s still with us now is only following along to watch us fry.”
“Just what are you doing, Bee?” her brother growled from somewhere close behind her.
“I’m getting an assist from gravity,” she told him. “We’re doing a tight parabola around the sun. Either we make it to jump speed before we burn up, or we don’t.”
“Where are we jumping to?” That was Jessan, on his knees beside her; the Khesatan was already busy changing the bandage he’d put on her just before lift.
Glad somebody besides Llannat thinks I’ll be around long enough to need it
, she thought, and shrugged one shoulder. “We’ll know when we get there.”
Jessan finished changing the bandage and stood up. “What if you’ve miscalculated?”
Beka turned her head just long enough to look at him. “Then I’m sorry I dragged you along to a family party,” she said. “But what the hell—it was fun while it lasted.”
She turned back to the velocity readouts. Another five
seconds … three seconds … one second
… now! She reached out her arm for the hyperdrive enable.
“And whatever happens, Nivome the Rolny is dead.”
 
C
OMMANDER GIL leaned his chair back against the wall and listened to the ice melting in his tumbler of Galcenian brandy.
At least, the cantina’s barkeep had claimed that the pale amber fluid was Galcenian brandy; along with his drink, Gil was nursing a dark suspicion that the liquor had never come nearer to the galaxy’s capital than a holding vat in a middle-planet distillery. Gil’s companion had opted for the local wine instead—but then, Jos Metadi had been drinking that vintage since well before the Magewar ended.
Gil shook his tumbler to hurry up the dilution a little, and smiled in spite of himself.
I have to admit, this tour of duty hasn’t been dull. Artat, Pleyver, Ovredis, and now Innish-Kyl … where next, I wonder?
This particular outing had started a few days ago, with a message Gil had brought into the General’s office at Prime Base on Galcen.
“Relay from the merchantman
Blue Sun,
out of Ophel—personal to you, sir.”
The General had looked curious. Ophel was a privately owned planet that fell into the Republic’s sphere of influence, but the Ophelans had some interesting neighbors, and the rumors coming out of that sector had been even more confusing than usual lately.
“What do they say?”
“It’s a bit of an odd one,” said Gil. He quoted by memory from the printout flimsy he held in one hand. “No names, just ‘You sold me something a while back. Want the final payment? Same place as before. We’ll wait for you.’”
“Do they mention a date?”
“Yes, sir,” Gil said. “A week from today, Standard.”
“Wait for me, hell,” the General said. “I’ll be there first.”
Gil suppressed a sigh. “Excuse me, sir—but where, exactly, is ‘there’?”
Metadi didn’t answer. He was already clearing his desk by the brute-force method, glancing at each item and tossing it into either the main drawer or the waste-disposal unit.
“Get a ship ready,” he said, still sorting. “And tell the pilot to take some time off. This will just be me flying.”
“Alone?”
The General paused, the folder in his hand suspended between the drawer and the disposal unit. He gave Gil a long look. “Take some leave if you want to, and come along as copilot. You’ve earned it.”
He hadn’t explained any further, though; and so far, Gil had found himself no more enlightened than before.
After a flight to Waycross, of all places, at the General’s habitual speed of faster-than-safe, they’d docked the little unmarked craft in one of the bays, changed into civvies, and headed for the Blue Sun Cantina.
The establishment’s name made Gil’s eyebrows go up a bit—
Freighter out of Ophel, did they say?
At least, he reflected, he and the General were properly dressed for a spaceport rendezvous: civilian clothing and concealed weapons.
Just what armaments the General had tucked away under his dark jacket Gil wasn’t sure, but he knew for certain Metadi would be packing something. The commander himself had taken to carrying a hand-blaster up one sleeve ever since Beka Rosselin-Metadi’s wake. The figure waiting in the shadows that night had turned out to be a friend—next time, though, they might not be so lucky.
What’s good for the General is good for the aide
, Gil reflected, taking a cautious sip of the brandy.
I never did think much of going after the villains armed with nothing but an empty beer mug.
The security panel by the cantina doorway beeped once. Along with most of the other customers, Gil let his gaze travel in that direction.
Well, now,
he thought.
What have we here?
The new arrival paused for a moment in the dim interior light. A smallish, dark woman in a plain black coverall, she drew speculative looks from the cantina’s regulars:
Not
a spacer, Gil could almost hear them thinking,
and not a hooker, so what’s a respectable dirtsider doing up there at the bar?
Then the speculative glances hit the black and silver staff tucked into the belt of her coverall, and slid away into the corners of the room.
The General chuckled. “You don’t push an Adept.”
“What in the world is she doing here, though?” Gil wondered aloud.
“She’ll tell us if she wants to,” said the General.
And in fact, the Adept was heading for their table. As she drew nearer, Gil felt another piece of the puzzle clicking into place: he’d last seen this particular Adept on Ovredis, playing duenna to royalty.
She slid into the empty seat at the table, and looked from Gil to the General and back again.
“Good evening, gentlesirs.”
The General nodded. “Good evening, Mistress. Mind telling me what brings you to a place like this?”
“I have a message,” the Adept said. “
‘Crystal
World
, Bay One-three-eight.’”
“That’s it?”
It was the Adept’s turn to nod. “That’s it. Shipboard’s safer, if you know what I mean.”
Metadi smiled at her. “I was playing this game before your captain was born, Mistress. Finish your beer and let’s go.”
The Adept’s dark skin darkened a bit more. “We can go right now,” she said, pushing the mug away. “I’ve had worse beer than this, but not lately.”
The walk to the docking bays didn’t take long; the narrow alleyways of portside Waycross were almost deserted in the afternoon heat. In the stark, yellow-white glare of Innish-Kyl’s sun, the exquisite little blue and silver yacht in Bay 138 looked to Gil like a spacer’s idea of a bad joke.
The General seemed to think so, too. His brows drew together in a frown, and he followed in silence as the Adept led them up into the spaceyacht by the crew door.
Belowdecks, though,
Crystal World
was all business—compact, powerful, and discreetly armed. The General’s scowl began to clear as they passed through Crew Berthing, and by the time they’d ascended the steep metal stairs from the bridge and emerged onto the observation deck, he was almost smiling.
The observation deck gave an illusion of spaciousness that the lower portion of the ship had lacked. Holoprojections on three sides of the carpeted area showed a formal garden extending into parkland in the misty distance. White-metal lawn furniture with green plush cushions completed the effect. Lieutenant Ari Rosselin-Metadi rose to his feet from a low hassock as they entered, his massive height a jarring note against the delicate formality of the surroundings.
The General regarded the young man for a moment.
“It’s good to see you again in one piece,” he said finally. “Mind telling me what this bit of fancywork is doing in a working spaceport?”
Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi and the Adept looked at each other. “It’s a long story,” the woman said after a pause.
“In that case,” said the General, strolling over to take a seat in one of the wrought-metal chairs, “the two of you had better get started on it.”
 
“Beka … Captain … wake up.”
She pressed her face into the pillow and shook her head. “Too tired.”
“Our visitors are here.”
She sat bolt upright. “Already?”
Her head spun. She felt Nyls Jessan slipping an arm around her shoulders, and leaned for a moment against his unobtrusive support.
“Damn,” she said. “That approach left me in worse shape than running the Web out of Pleyver.”
“You weren’t fresh out of the healing pod when you ran the Web, either,” the Khesatan said. “We should have stayed at the base another week so you could get some rest.”
Beka shook her head. “No. I want to get this over with.”
She straightened up again, and felt his hand tighten briefly on her bare shoulder before relaxing and letting go.
“I’ll have plenty of time on my hands while the
’Hammer
is in the yards,” she continued, pushing herself up from the narrow bunk in the captain’s quarters on
Crystal World
. She stood a few seconds with her feet braced apart on the deckplates; then, satisfied that her legs would hold her, she crossed the tiny cabin to the clothes locker.
She pulled out garments one at a time, tossing each item over onto the bunk until she’d assembled a complete set of dirtside clothing.
“You said ‘visitors,’” she commented as she pulled on the trousers. “Who’s the extra?”
“An aide, looks like, or maybe a bodyguard.”
She snorted. “Since when did Dadda have a bodyguard?”
Jessan picked up the loose white shirt from the bunk and held it up for her like a valet. “An aide, then. Llannat says he’s all right.”
As he spoke, he eased first her right arm and then her left into the full sleeves of the Mandeynan shirt. Beka accepted his help without argument. For one thing, the new skin and regenerated flesh in her right side were still tender, and apt to protest at stretching or abrupt movement. For another …
Don’t think about what you can’t help. You knew from the start it was going to finish this way.
“Dadda wouldn’t bring him along if he wasn’t all right,” she said, looking away from Jessan and concentrating hard on tucking her shirttails into the waistband of her trousers. That finished, she picked up the cravat and began tying it. “Where did you put them?”
“On the observation deck. Ari and Llannat are keeping them entertained while you get ready.”
“I can imagine,” she said. She sat down on the bunk and reached for Tarnekep Portree’s high, polished boots.
Jessan took them away from her before she could bend over to pull them on.
“I’ll do that for you,” he said. “You’ll overstress the new muscle if you try to do it yourself.”
The Khesatan knelt down and started working the tight-fitting boots onto her feet and up over her calves. He was deft and gentle about it; she sat looking down at his bent head and bit her lip to keep from saying anything stupid.
You thought losing the Professor was bad enough—shows how much you know, doesn’t it, girl?
Jessan finished with the second boot and rose to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, wondering what she’d done that he had noticed.
Standing up, she took her blaster rig off its hook and strapped it on. The knife and its leather sheath, of course, hadn’t left her arm in the first place. Jessan stood by the cabin door watching her, his grey eyes troubled.
She bit her lip again and reached out for the red plastic eye patch. Then she drew back her hand. She’d gotten into this as Beka Rosselin-Metadi, not Tarnekep Portree, and that was the way she was going to get out again—“maybe not quite the same as before,” she admitted, under her breath. “But then, who is?”
“Who indeed?” inquired Jessan. The Khesatan bowed, and held out an arm in his best Crown-Prince-of-Sapne manner. “Come, my lady. Your family awaits.”
 
“ … so Bee pointed
Warhammer
at the sun, and jumped us as soon as gravity pulled the ship up to speed.”
Some people, Commander Gil reflected, could make even melodrama sound routine and prosaic. Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi clearly worked hard to be included in that category. His tale of the
’Hammer’s
adventures had enough holes in it to make a lace curtain, and the big medic hadn’t even tried to disguise the gaps.
The General only smiled. “Are you sure that’s all?”
Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi shrugged. “What else is there to tell? We popped out of hyper in open space. There’s more of that around than anything else, so you can’t even say we were especially lucky. And the rest was easy.”
“Don’t believe him,” said a Khesatan-accented voice from the metal stairway. “Qualification in field surgery is no help at all when it comes to repairing starship engines.”
“Whatever works, Commander,” said the General. “How’s the patient?”
“Still in Intensive Care at Sunrise Shipyards on Gyffer.” The reply came not from Lieutenant Commander Nyls Jessan, but from the remaining member of
Crystal World’s
complement, the one who was coming up the stairway a step or two behind the Khesatan. “But she’ll make it.”
Beka Rosselin-Metadi stepped out onto the observation deck. The General’s daughter appeared paler and thinner than Gil remembered her, either as Tarnekep Portree or the Princess Berran of Sapne.
But that’s not surprising,
Gil told himself,
if even half of what her brother says happened is true
.
Beka sat down in the deck’s remaining empty chair, and Lieutenant Commander Jessan settled himself cross-legged on the carpet not too far away. The General smiled again.
BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
3.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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