Eternity's End (51 page)

"If I knew where to look, I'd send you after my own ships," YZ/I said.

"But you think they all somehow strayed into the Deep Flux, and couldn't get out?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't have to ask you to go find out, would I?"

"I guess not. But why me?"

"Why
not
you?"

Legroeder stirred angrily. "Give me a reason!"

YZ/I raised his eyebrows. "All right. You're a rigger, and you've seen the ship, and you have good reason to want to find it again. Don't you?"

Legroeder shook his head stubbornly. "Maybe I do. But why did
you
bring
me
here to do this? It wasn't for my benefit. Why don't you send your own riggers to find it?"

YZ/I took a deep, hoarse breath.
"Do you think we haven't tried?"
His voice softened to a growl. "And we've lost two more ships trying. So no, we didn't go to all this trouble just for the fun of it."

"You still haven't answered my question. What do you think I can do that your riggers can't? I told the Narseil that your riggers have tricks
we
could learn from."

YZ/I looked pained. "Our rigging may be
different
from yours. But that doesn't necessarily make it better."

Legroeder was startled by the admission. "All right, then—different. I don't know how your people function with all that augmentation, to be honest." Legroeder rubbed the implant on his right temple. "I'm lucky these things didn't ruin my ability to function in the net. I'm sure it's only because they stayed in the background."

"Exactly," said YZ/I.

"Huh?"

"Sure, we have AI augmentation that can run rings around yours, and it's very useful. We couldn't take on the Deep Flux without it. But we also have riggers who are dependent on it, who I think have lost skills that you take for granted. The intuitive element, the
human
element. They're starting to lose it." YZ/I jabbed a thumb at himself. "You think I'm crazy, saying that? I'm just telling you what's happening."

He paused. "So let's talk about Renwald Legroeder—who not only has
had
an encounter with
Impris
, but escaped from Fortress DeNoble, escaped through a passage that to anyone else would have been suicide alley. We had a ship visiting there at the time—they saw the whole thing. Do you remember it? What do they call it, the Chimney?"

Legroeder shivered at the memory: the frantic, terrifying dash through the minefield, and then the Chimney, the Fool's Refuge... chased by raiders and flux torpedoes and fear, and somehow finding his way. He hadn't thought much about
how
he had gotten through, except to be grateful that he'd been so monumentally lucky.

"You think other riggers could have done that? I understand quite a few have tried, and died."

Tracy-Ace, Legroeder realized, was gazing at him with a strangely penetrating expression, and a hint of a smile on her lips. He shrugged, not to her but to YZ/I.

"And according to Rigger Deutsch's report, you led a pretty good chase through the bottom layers of the Flux when you were engaging
Flechette
. Well, okay—maybe some other riggers could have done that." YZ/I was staring unblinking at him now, ripples of light running down his arms and torso. "But I don't know
any
riggers—except maybe a couple of our maintainers—who could have seen those features of the Deep FLux that you picked out in the maintainers' net. And you weren't even in the net! You were just watching an image on the wall!"

Legroeder felt a sudden dizziness, remembering. Yes, he had seen those features. But so what? What did that mean?

"You don't even
know
that you're unusual, do you? At DeNoble, they were too dumb to recognize what they had." YZ/I cocked his head and gestured to Tracy-Ace. "Why do you think she took you into a high-security area like that? For your health?"

Open-mouthed, Legroeder turned to Tracy-Ace. "I thought it was—I don't know—that you were trying to gain my trust."

She inclined her head. "Yes, I was. But that part didn't work so well, did it?"

YZ/I chuckled. "Of course she wanted to gain your trust. But
I
also wanted to know what you would see there. And what you saw... tells me you're worth taking a gamble on." His voice became almost solemn. "You have the vision. You see
deeper
than my people. Or at least, differently. That's why I want you to go."

"Well, I—"

"And I want you to take some of your Narseil friends with you."

Legroeder closed his open mouth. For a few seconds, he was speechless. "You want the Narseil to go?"

"Yes, because they'll see things that no human will see. Don't you get it? I want to send out the full spectrum—my people with their augments, you, the Narseil. Everyone together."

Legroeder's voice caught. "I'm having just a little trouble believing this. You want to work with the Narseil?"

"That's what I said, didn't I? Do I have to repeat everything?" YZ/I reached into a compartment on his chair. "Do you want a cigar?"

"No. Thank you."

Looking disappointed, YZ/I withdrew his hand. "Anyway, yes—I think it's time we and the Narseil talked. It might be very useful for us to exchange information."

Legroeder gave a harsh laugh. "And it might be useful if you stopped raiding innocent shipping!"

YZ/I grimaced and reached into his cigar compartment again. His hand seemed to war with his mind for a moment, before he snapped the compartment shut, empty handed. He drew himself up. "As a matter of fact... that could be on the table, too."

Legroeder blinked, startled.

YZ/I looked pained and angry, and not eager to say more. Tracy-Ace looked as if she wanted to kick him. Instead, she turned to Legroeder. "The free ride. YZ/I, unlike some of the other bosses, has begun to recognize what some of us have been saying for a long time—the free ride may be coming to an end. The raiding. The
tax
. We've been living on it so long now—"

"It's made us
soft
," YZ/I growled. "Soft and lazy. And we're supposed to go out and colonize the Well of Stars?" He snorted.

"I think what YZ/I is trying to say," Tracy-Ace said slowly, "is that, in addition to making us soft, all the raiding has made us vulnerable."

Legroeder didn't hide his confusion.

"Look, we know that there are some, like the Narseil, who are getting ready to come looking for us. With guns. The ship you came on was just a start."

"Well—"

"We know you came here to talk, if you could," Tracy-Ace said. "But you also came to gather intelligence to wipe us out, if you could. We're not idiots."

"Oh hell,"
YZ/I muttered. "If you're going to tell him everything. Don't get cocky, Legroeder. We could fight your fleets. But sometimes—" sparks of light shot through his face, as though it hurt to say it "—sometimes, it makes more sense to talk. And that's what I want to do with the Narseil. Talk. And... go after something of mutual benefit. So, are you interested?" He rocked back in his chair.

"I'm interested," Legroeder said. "But what are you offering in return? Besides some vague promise to talk?"

"Why, you—" YZ/I cursed in a tongue Legroeder didn't recognize, but there was no mistaking the tone. He reached into his seat compartment, grabbed a cigar, and snapped the end of it alight. He blew an enormous cloud of smoke into the air. "Isn't
Impris
enough? I send you home with your friends, and you get to clear your name. Plus we open lines of talk. Isn't that enough?"

Legroeder held his breath until the smoke cleared, thinking, it wasn't as if he was in a position of power here; but on the other hand, YZ/I had gone to a lot of trouble to enlist him. "Seems to me," he said, with a cough, "that there's more at stake here. You mentioned a willingness to end the piracy."

"Rings!"
YZ/I shouted.
"I didn't say I would discuss it with you!"

Legroeder shot back, "You didn't say you wouldn't." He took a breath, gestured with one hand. "Look, you're telling me all about how you want to
talk
with the Narseil, and
share
with the Narseil, and give up the free ride."

YZ/I waved the burning tip of his cigar. "Your point?"

"And you've told me all about Carlotta conspiring with the Centrists, and Carlotta this and Carlotta that, but you haven't said a word about yourself. How do I know you're not as involved in piracy as she is? Not to mention slavery." A rush of memories from DeNoble threatened to overwhelm him. He forced them back down, and glanced at Tracy-Ace out of the corner of his eye.
How do I know
you
aren't involved in it, too?
he wanted, and didn't want, to say.

YZ/I shrugged. "We keep our ear to the deck on the Centrist Worlds, if that's what you mean. But we don't have our hooks in their governments, like KM/C. The raiding—okay.
I
see it can't last. Carlotta, she doesn't see it. Neither do some of the other bosses. We've got a disagreement in that regard." YZ/I raised his right hand and held it so that he could look into his own palm, as though studying the threaded pattern of light there. "With all the things we don't agree on, it's a wonder we've gotten this fleet assembled at all."

He eyed Legroeder. "So if we
do
this thing, KM/C isn't going to like it. And she isn't going to like our collaborating with the Narseil. These are things I have to think about. I don't live in isolation. Carlotta likes her cozy arrangement."

"But wouldn't it be to everyone's benefit to find out why ships are disappearing?" Legroeder asked.
And wouldn't it also be to the benefit of that Kyber fleet that I want to stop? Hell and damnation
.

"Yeah, but it wasn't Carlotta's probe ships that got lost, so what's she care? You rescue
Impris
and that'll interfere with a lucrative raiding setup." YZ/I shrugged. "Couldn't happen to a nicer person."

Legroeder thought about getting KM/C even angrier at him than she was already...

"So needless to say, I'm taking one hell of a risk just underwriting the mission. So don't give me a lot of crap about what other risks I ought to be taking on."

Legroeder closed his eyes. Had he pushed as far as he could push? Probably he would be smart to stop here, and just agree to it. Bring
Impris
back, clear his name, get people talking. What were Harriet and Morgan up to now? And Maris? They seemed a universe away, another lifetime. He was supposed to ask about Bobby Mahoney. Jesus Christ, he'd almost forgotten. But this wasn't the time...

"And yet," he found himself saying, "you continue to fly, and fight, with forced labor."

YZ/I glared in astonishment. "Christ, you don't give up, do you, boy?" He coughed on the cigar smoke; the stench was making Legroeder dizzy. "Yeah, we fly with captives. It's part of our history. What do you want me to do about it?"

"Give it up."

YZ/I gave a long, sputtering laugh. "Give it up!" He snapped his fingers. "Just like that!"

"You said you were the underground. You want things to change."

"Yeah, we're the underground," YZ/I said slowly. "And the reason we're the
under
ground is you don't just change things overnight. People like Lanyard—they've got friends."

Legroeder felt as if he were sliding on ice, unable to stop. "You're getting soft and lazy, preying on the innocent."

YZ/I stood up and shouted,
"Fuck... you... boy!
Don't you talk to me that way!"

Legroeder realized he had involuntarily raised an arm to ward off a blow.

YZ/I stood before him, his face a meteor shower of fury. Then he shifted his glare to Tracy-Ace. "What are you looking at?" he shouted.

Tracy-Ace raised her eyebrows.

"Rings."
YZ/I chomped his cigar and turned his back to them for a moment. Then he sat and shook his head. "You have to understand some history here, for chrissake.
Jesus!
You don't know what it was like."

But I'm about to find out...

"The Centrists cut us off. Treated us like scum, like nonhumans. Sure, they made peace.
Peace
." YZ/I snorted. "Peace with no future, peace as long as no one with
hardware
in their brains had a planet to live on, or worlds to conquer. They cast us off, cut us off, and sent us to live in Golen Space. And you wonder why the Free Kyber started raiding shipping, three generations ago? What else were they supposed to do?"

Legroeder opened his mouth, closed it. "But you said you want to change it."

"
Yes!
We need each other! I know that! But it can't be done overnight. There's just no way."

Legroeder leaned forward. "So make a start. Start it here. This is your chance to make history."

YZ/I glared, his anger clearly rising.

Tracy-Ace rubbed the flickering augments by her left eye, and said softly, "He's saying what I've been saying, YZ/I."

"Do me a favor," Legroeder said, "and put up that image of the fleet again. The colony fleet."

The monitors changed to the fleet image.

"Big fleet. Must be hundreds of ships."

"Over a thousand," YZ/I said.

Legroeder nodded. "And it means a lot to you to have the fleet get through safely. A lot of effort. Resources. Lives." Legroeder pressed his lips together.
What am I talking about trading here?
His head was pounding.

YZ/I stared at him furiously.

"End the piracy."

YZ/I spat to one side. "We'll talk about it later."

"You're asking me to risk my life. And you want me to trust that we'll
talk
about it? Send me and the Narseil home with
Impris
. You can have all the information we get from her. It could save your fleet."

YZ/I snarled and blew smoke at him.

Legroeder let the smoke pass. "If we're going to deal, make it real."

YZ/I flung down his cigar. "Guards!" he shouted.

Before Legroeder could finish drawing a breath, there were four heavily armed and augmented Kyber soldiers surrounding him on the dais. Tracy-Ace was staring at YZ/I, wide-eyed. Legroeder's heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear YZ/I's next words.