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 (7 page)

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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The General didn’t seem to notice the weather at all. He stood by the Base’s aircar with the cold wind whipping his hair around his face, and fixed the station CO with a look that was even colder than the wind. “Who’s in charge of the investigation on-site?”
“Petty Officer Ilesh, sir,” said the Base CO. Do you want to talk to him?”
The General nodded, once. “Bring him over.”
The Station CO signaled to a serious-looking young man dressed in dirty fatigues. He approached the General and saluted smartly.
The General regarded Ilesh with the same cold eye he had given everything else on-planet so far, and asked, “What makes you think that this is my ship?”
“Mostly circumstantial evidence, sir.”
“Show me what you have.”
“There isn’t much to show,” Ilesh said. “Witnesses identified pictures of
Warhammer
as the ship that they saw coming in. We found part of the keel, with serial numbers, and the log recorder with the last three flights, and we have the engines: Gyfferan Hypermasters, standard for the class.”
Gil saw a corner of the General’s mouth quirk in what might have been a bleak smile. “Very good, Ilesh. Satisfy an old man’s morbid curiosity—where’d you dig up the specs on a ship that was fifty years out of date when I got hold of her?”
“Back volume of
Jein’s Merchant Spacecraft
, sir. Station library.”
Again the bleak smile. “Good thinking. Have you towed the wreckage away yet?”
Ilesh shook his head. “No, sir. It’s right over there.”
He pointed at a tangle of metal pieces that looked to Gil like nothing so much as one of the more tasteless monuments to the Siege of Entibor. The General looked at the pile for a moment, and then began a slow walk around it. In silence, he made one complete circuit, then stooped and picked up something that Gil recognized as part of a starship’s main control panel.
Metadi turned the bit of metal over and looked at the chips and wiring on the back. One or two chips he even pried loose and rubbed free of soot with his thumb for closer examination, before dropping the panel back onto the pile. Then he moved on to another fragment of metal, this one too large and heavy to lift. He knelt beside it on the icy ground, and ran his finger over the weld that had joined it to the main hull.
Then he rose to his feet and glanced over at Petty Officer Ilesh. “Where’s the rest of the engines?”
“That’s all there ever was, sir.”
The General stood looking at the pile of blackened metal for a little while longer, and then turned away. “I’ve seen enough,” he said. “Let’s go back to town.”
At the base, he was terse with the Commanding Officer. “I want the completed investigation in my hands by ten-hundred Local, tomorrow. It will show that the ship that crashed was the
’Hammer
, and that the cause of the wreck was nonspecific mechanical failure rather than pilot error. It will further show that
Warhammer
’s captain was Beka Rosselin-Metadi, and that she did not survive the crash. I will accept that investigation as complete and correct, and announce the results to the news channels fifteen minutes later. After that, the investigation will be closed. Do you follow?”
The station CO looked like a man who’d just taken a half-dozen stun-bolts in the midsection, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Commander Gil!”
Gil abandoned the attempt at invisibility he’d been earnestly cultivating for the past several hours. “Yes, sir?”
“The personal details—if you could take care of those …”
Gil felt a surge of sympathy. “Of course, sir. Do you have any specific instructions?”
After a moment, the General nodded. “As soon as the investigation’s closed, do whatever you can to pry the … remains … away from the pathologists, and see that they‘re—that she’s—shipped home to Galcen for a proper funeral.”
“And the wreckage of the ’
Hammer
, sir?”
“Put the pieces into low orbit and let them burn up on reentry,” came the curt reply. “I don’t want parts of my ship showing up in every souvenir shop from here to Spiral’s End.”
 
Two weeks after the fight in the clearing—or so the date stamp on his medical chart informed him—Ari Rosselin-Metadi came out of the accelerated healing pod in the Medical Station’s hospital dome. Llannat Hyfid was waiting beside his bed in the convalescent ward, which surprised him a little. She appeared uneasy about something, which also surprised him. After the cool head she’d shown during the aircar chase and what followed, such nervousness seemed out of character.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
“Look who’s talking—it’s going to be two weeks of bed rest before you’re fit for light duty. Jessan almost didn’t make it back in time.”
He nodded. Even the slight movement made his head swim, and he had to wait a moment before going on. “Close?”
“In more ways than one,” she said. She looked away, seeming unwilling to meet his eyes. “For a moment back there I thought I was a write-off, too. Thanks.”
“Call us even.” He paused again, and then went on. “I thought that all the Magelords were dead.”
Llannat appeared to be contemplating something in the far corner of the ward beyond him. “The great Magelords are as dead as the Adepts could make them,” she said, after a long silence. “But they left their spies and their apprentices behind, especially in the outplanets. With the war lost and the Mageworlders stuck behind the border zone, there isn’t much for the leftovers to do but cause petty trouble. The Guild usually takes care of them as soon as they show up.”
“I’ll bet your particular Mage had something to do with that outbreak of Rogan’s,” said Ari thoughtfully. “At a guess, the Quincunx furnished him or his boss with a mutated form of the dry-world virus—and the customer didn’t like it when Munngralla turned right around and tried to sell us the cure.”
He stopped. When Llannat didn’t take up the conversation again, he went on, “How is Munngralla anyway?”
The Adept seemed relieved by the change of subject. “Gone,” she said. “Just as soon as we got you into the pod and stabilized.”
“Didn’t want to stick around for explanations,” guessed Ari. “Since he probably also furnished your friends with the mescalomide for my beer.”
There was another long pause. Then Llannat shrugged. “Maybe. But you seem to have earned his gratitude somehow. He left the tholovine behind when he disappeared. Two more packets have shown up on the CO’s desk since then, and the Rogan’s cases are responding nicely.”
She fell silent.
Ari waited a moment, and said, “It sounds like everything’s worked out for the best. So what’s the problem?”
The pause this time stretched out even longer than before—so long that Ari began to feel the first touches of a faint, indefinable dread.
And then, reluctantly, as if she’d delayed it as long as she could before speaking, she told him what had happened to
Warhammer
on the Ice Flats of Port Artat.
 
W
INTER HAD tightened its grip on Embrig in the week or so since
Warhammer
had blasted out of the spaceport. The snow tonight lay in drifts against the buildings along the Strip. Beka shivered in spite of her Mandeynan-style overcoat, and told herself it was the cold.
She didn’t believe herself.
I feel like I have a target painted on my back
.
So far, though, her disguise seemed to be holding, somewhat to her own surprise. The long coat with silver buttons, the tall boots polished to a high gloss, and the loose white shirt with its elaborate neckcloth and ruffles at the cuffs might be the height of manly fashion in Mandeyn’s northern hemisphere—just the same, Beka suspected that on her the overall effect was more androgynous than anything else.
She’d said as much to the Professor, back in his asteroid hideout, but he’d just shrugged and said, “You get all kinds in a big galaxy.”
He’d even waved aside her offer to dispense with the long yellow hair that hadn’t been cut since the start of her schooldays back on Galcen. Instead, they’d wound up dying the hair an unremarkable brown and tying it off into a queue with a black velvet ribbon, making her the picture—or so the Professor claimed—of a young Embrigan dandy with a taste for violence and low company.
The heavy blaster riding low on her hip, she supposed, was where the violence came in. That, and the Professor’s only concession to what she’d always thought a real disguise should look like, a red optical-plastic patch covering her entire left eye from cheekbone to brow ridge. And as for low company—ahead on the corner, the Painted Lily Lounge flashed its gaudy holosign against the night.
“Remember,” said the Professor, “your name is Tarnekep Portree, and nobody crosses you more than once.”
“I feel like an idiot,” muttered Beka. “A
scared
idiot.”
The Professor chuckled. “Trust me, the effect from out front is admirably sinister. Ah, here we are.”
The street door of the Painted Lily slid apart before them. They entered, passing through a chilly antechamber whose inner door waited to open until the outer door had closed—a common setup anyplace in the galaxy where the weather outside got more than average hot or cold, and one that had never made Beka nervous before.
First time for everything
, she thought, as she turned over her coat to the cloakroom attendant. That left her in shirt and trousers, and feeling even more like a target in spite of the blaster.
Oh, well … here we go
.
The front room of the Painted Lily had a dance floor, a bar, and too many little round tables, all competing for the available space. A small band—brass, woodwind, keyboard, and electronic drums—played a tune that had first been hot the year she’d left Galcen for good.
She hooked her left thumb into her belt, and let her right hand hang casually just below the grip of the holstered blaster. Maybe she had only used the damned thing once in her life, but nobody here knew that. She lifted her chin a little, and gave the room a slow, tight-lipped scan. One or two of the Lily’s patrons had looked up, half-curious, as she and the Professor entered; when her glance hit them, they look hastily away.
It’s got to be the eye patch
, she thought. At her left hand, the Professor gave a faint chuckle; Beka wondered if that was what he’d meant by “admirably sinister.”
The Professor, who carried no visible weapons, wasn’t making anybody nervous—but his waistcoat of black moire spidersilk, and his neckcloth and ruffles of white lace, earned him the personal attention of the Painted Lily’s manager.
“And what would the gentlesir’s pleasure be tonight?”
The Professor smiled. “Just a quiet hand or two of cards—ronnen, tammani, whatever’s going on.”
“You’ll want Morven, in that case,” said the manager, with an answering smile. “Double tammani’s the game tonight.”
“Excellent,” said the Professor. “Lead on, good sir. Come, Tarnekep.”
Beka followed the manager and the Professor across the Lily’s crowded floor, dodging waiters, dancers, and little tables. A narrow hallway lit by amber glow-globes in wrought-metal brackets led to the back room where Morven the gambler ran his games. The manager pressed his thumb on an ID plate set into the wall, and bowed the Professor in as the door slid open.
Beka entered unheralded at the Professor’s right shoulder. As the door slid shut, she paused, taking in the harsh yellow light that replaced the outside’s cozy dimness, the gaudy-colored tammani cards falling onto the green baize tablecloth, the gamblers too intent on their game to look up at the latest arrival—and Ignaceu LeSoit.
Oh, damn, we’ve had it,
Beka thought in despair. Her old shipmate leaned against the far wall, looking like nothing so much as an out-of-work spacer too broke to play—except for the heavy government-surplus blaster, twin to her own.
Which it damn well ought to be, since we picked them up in the same curio shop at Suivi Point when I was the new kid on the Sidh and Ignac’ was showing me the town.
She dropped her hand to the blaster grip and braced herself for defiance, reminding herself that it wasn’t in her blood, either side, to go down without a fight. But to her amazement no recognition showed in LeSoit’s eyes—only a quick, appraising glance that took in her appearance and categorized her all at the same time.
He nodded to her once, as one professional to another. She nodded once in return before moving to lean against the opposite wall with a casual air only just now borrowed from its original owner.
You always did say I learned fast, Ignac’. Let’s hope it’s true
.
The Professor slid into the seat to the right of the grey-eyed man shuffling the cards. “Deal me in, Morven.”
The gambler looked up. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said, and began dealing out a new round.
“As well you should have been,” said the Professor, watching the cards falling facedown onto the green cloth. He gathered up his hand and continued. “I would have stopped by to collect earlier, but I had some business out of town. Now—would you be so good as to pass me four of the ten-thousand-credit chips, two of the one-thousands, and the rest in tens and hundreds mixed?”
Morven hesitated. “I don’t have that kind of money right in front of me. When I cash in, I’ll draw your winnings. I pay my bets.”
“Of course,” said the Professor. “Did anyone suggest the contrary? Until then, if you could stake me to a couple of hundred to help me pass the time …”
“No trouble,” said Morven. He slid over a stack of chips—small ones, Beka supposed. Her own skills didn’t go beyond solitaire kingnote and a fair game of ronnen for decimal-credit stakes. She’d never been much for gambling; she worked too hard for her money to enjoy seeing it go out the airlock because she’d guessed wrong about a run of cards. The players around the table didn’t seem to share her prejudice, though. Most of the chips tended to wind up in front of Morven, but as the evening wore on a respectable stack began to grow in front of the Professor as well.
She quit counting the hands early on, having discovered that a game of cards, if you don’t care for it, is even more boring to watch than to play. The gilded antique chronometer above the door read well past local midnight when Morven dealt out the cards yet again and announced, “A thousand or better to stay in, gentle sirs and ladies.”
The Professor slid a gold chip into the center of the table. “I’m in.”
Two of the remaining gamblers—a spacer-captain in the colors of the Red Shift Line, and a plump woman in an Embrigan gown of bright green velvet—matched the gold chip with their own. The others looked at their cards, the table, and each other, then laid down their hands.
At ten thousand, the spacer-captain folded, and when the stakes reached twenty thousand the woman in green shook her head regretfully. “It’s not my night tonight,” she said, gathering up her fur-lined cloak. “Another time, perhaps.”
With her departure, the big table was empty except for Morven and the Professor. Across the room from Beka, LeSoit moved a fraction away from the wall, shifting his weight back onto his feet and casting a quick glance in Beka’s direction as he brought his hands clear. She met the glance and followed suit. Now, for certain, was a time to be ready for trouble.
“Twenty thousand,” said Morven again. “Are you still in?”
The Professor lifted two black chips off the stack before him and put them out onto the table. “I’m in.”
 
The sun had finished setting over Galcen Prime Base in a blaze of red, and the blue-white floodlights of the spaceport were coming on against the dark. Commander Gil watched from behind the safety line as the scheduled Space Force mail courier from the Latam sector settled gently onto the tarmac, and wished with all his heart that he could be elsewhere.
His duties over the past two weeks had not been congenial ones. First had come the unpleasant task of escorting Beka Rosselin-Metadi’s remains, such as they were, from Artat to Galcen. Then had come all the panoply and protocol of a full state funeral for the young woman who had been, however briefly and against her will, the last Domina of Entibor. Organizing that had been bad enough, but at least the details had all been codified centuries before—from the order of precedence for the eulogists to the color of the memorial garlands.
Tonight’s exercise, however, was something else again. “She was a starpilot,” the General had said to Gil. “And her ship was known. They’ll be expecting a wake, down in the commercial spaceport. See to it, Commander.”
Gil went off to do the General’s bidding. This time, he didn’t have any formal guidelines to help him—but anyone who’d made commander in the Space Force had spent time waiting for ships in various ports, and anyone who’d spent time hanging around the ports had seen at least one free-spacer’s wake. Some people even remembered how they’d got home afterward.
After Gil had settled on a day for the wake, he went down to the largest tavern in the port quarter.
“Drinks on the house,” he told the manager. “Send the bill to General Metadi on his personal account.”
The manager was only too glad to make the rest of the arrangements, including spreading the word around the port. For a really high-class wake, with this much advance notice, every spacer in Galcen Prime would probably show up. No one wanted to risk the bad luck involved in shunning somebody else’s final party. That only increased your own chances of ending up unmourned in a “starpilot’s grave”—spacers’ slang throughout the civilized galaxy for a piece of drifting wreckage.
Gil’s visit to the port quarter took care of the main part of the occasion. But much as the General might like to be down in the spaceport with the rest of the crowd, Gil was determined that neither the General nor his family would be out in public any time soon.
“More beer,” said Gil to himself, and set off to arrange a private memorial celebration at the General’s home.
Now, a week later, thirsty spacers were already starting to line up for drinks at the Circle of Stars, just outside the spaceport gate. Elsewhere in Prime, Gil hoped, other men and women would be setting out for the Rosselin-Metadi estate north of the city—as was the man Gil was meeting, in this last errand of the night.
“He’ll want to fly up here himself,” the General had said, after the latest message from Nammerin. “See that he doesn’t.”
The courier’s ramp lowered to the tarmac, and a man in Space Force dress uniform emerged. He paused to look about at the foot of the ramp, and then headed for the spot where Commander Gil stood waiting.
The new arrival was big and broad-shouldered, but not until he’d almost reached the safety line did Gil fully appreciate his size. Unlike most very tall men, Ari Rosselin-Metadi wasn’t a gangling ectomorph—at a distance, his well-proportioned frame tended to disguise his height. Close at hand, though, he loomed over Commander Gil like a small mountain. At the regulation six-foot distance, he stopped and saluted.
Gil returned the salute. “Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi?” he said formally. “Commander Gil. Flag Aide. Your father sent me to meet you.”
The lieutenant nodded, more a weary inclination of the head than a response. In the stark glare of the port lights, his face was pale, with blue-purple smudges under the eyes.
“Yes, sir,” he said. The voice was a deep rumble, with the catch of exhaustion in it. Gil had ridden mail couriers on a space-available basis himself a time or two, and suspected that the lieutenant had probably been sleeping on top of the mailbags for a day or more in order to make it to Galcen tonight..
Not exactly what the doctor ordered for someone just out of a healing pod
, Gil thought.
He looks ready to drop.
“Let’s go,” he said. “The aircar’s over that way.”
The lieutenant was silent during the walk to the aircar. When they got there, he lowered himself into the passenger seat without argument, fastened the safety webbing, and let his head fall back against the padded seat. He didn’t slump or slouch—something about the set of his shoulders convinced Gil that the lieutenant would sooner collapse altogether than betray himself that way—but nevertheless his posture had the boneless quality of near-total exhaustion.
BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
9.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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