Finders Keepers (32 page)

He picked his way back through the debris to Mitkanos, lay his hand against the man’s good shoulder.

“Yavo.”

His eyes fluttered open. “
Vad,
Captain.”

“We’re in a ’Sko mother ship. Hangar bay. I need to move you belowdecks. Sick bay, if it’s still there. Then I’ve got to find Trilby.”

“And Farra. Dallon.”

“And Farra and Dallon, yes.”

Mitkanos struggled to push himself upright. “I think I can walk—”

“Wait. I’ll need help getting you down those stairs.”

“Help?”

But Rhis was already moving through the hatch lock, over the bodies of the dead ’Sko. He picked out a few pistols, still showing green, shoved them in the waistband of his pants. He had two laser rifles in his cabin.

And help.

“Yavo? Think you can stand now?”

Mitkanos opened his eyes. Blinked. “This is help?”

“This is Dezi. Dezi, Major Yavo Mitkanos. We need to get him down to the captain’s cabin.” Sick bay had taken considerable damage.

The ’droid cocked his tarnished head. “A pleasure to meet you, Major,” he said in flawless Zafharish. “Though I must say these are unfortunate circumstances. Here, let me assist you. I’m much stronger than I look.”

Rhis grabbed the burly man around the waist, careful of his damaged shoulder. Dezi pulled Mitkanos’s arm across his shoulder, braced himself against the man’s side.

“Ready?” Rhis asked him.

“Of course, Captain. It feels so good to be useful again.”

They made the first landing of stairs before Mitkanos could insert a comment. “You built this ’droid, Tivahr?”

Rhis shook his head, grinning in spite of his pain. “He’s Trilby’s. I just was putting him back together for her after he had a slight accident.”

Mitkanos grunted. “Did you have to hook up his mouth?”

Trilby dozed fitfully, blanket wrapped around her. She watched the ’Sko come and go through her lowered lashes. They never stayed long. They’d tap at something on the console in the corridor, then leave.

She glanced at her watch. Almost six hours had passed since they were brought on board. Dallon was asleep, his head cradled in Farra’s lap. The young woman caught her gaze, nodded slightly. Dallon was doing okay. She lightly stroked his hair.

Trilby was exhausted, but sleep frightened her. She’d see Rhis, his shirt stained, his dark eyes staring lifelessly. She didn’t want to remember him that way.

Rhis was Khyrhis, and Khyrhis was tall, commanding, gentle, challenging. With night-black hair and a body—

Her eyes jerked open. Someone said her name. A form stood in front of the force field.

“El. Li. Ot.” ’Sko.

She leaned her head back against the wall, regarded the ’Sko impassively. “I’m Elliot.”

“Elli. Ot.” It raised one hand. The other held a rifle. “Up. Stand.”

“Trilby—”

“It’s okay, Farra.” She stood, dropped the blanket at Farra’s feet as she passed by. She’d wondered when the ’Sko would get around to asking her questions.

The force field hazed. The ’Sko motioned her through. “Come.”

She followed it down the corridor. They stopped at the second field. The ’Sko touched something at its waist and the field dropped.

“Come.”

For a moment she thought of disobeying, just for the sheer obstinacy of it. But she wanted to see more of the mother ship, wanted to find some way to get out of the brig. She followed the tall form, glancing left and right. There were other cells, all empty save for an orange glow ahead on her left. She slowed her steps slightly as she came alongside, looked quickly down.

And saw a pair of dark blue eyes meet her gaze.

Her heart thudded and it took all her strength not to let the name escape her lips.

Carina.

She almost stumbled but caught herself. Her escort didn’t seem to notice.

They were near the end of the corridor. There were no other orange-tinged cells she could see. But Carina was here. Carina!

And Vitorio . . . She hadn’t seen Vitorio. But he had to be alive. Carina was.

Carina was alive.

Three more ’Sko joined them in the lift. They stared openly at her, making low comments in their high-pitched tongue. She still couldn’t tell the males from the females. Or officers from crew.

But they were Niyil, Rhis had said. That meant they were military. She wondered how he knew.

The other ’Sko exited a few decks later and she was left alone with her escort.

Then the doors slid open and she was led into a wider corridor, still bulkheaded and functional like the ones below. Like the ones on her ship. Instrument panels dotted the walls at irregular intervals.

Doors here were painted blue. The
Razalka
’s doors were color-coded, signifying division and location. She belatedly realized the lift doors on the brig deck were green.

She’d been too stunned by Carina’s appearance to take note of it.

The ’Sko stopped before a set of wide blue doors and spoke a rapid series of harsh-sounding words. The doors parted. “In,” it told her.

Her escort followed her in, surprised her by bowing to her, and then left.

An angular ’Sko sat behind a low black desk, its wide shoulders stretching the red fabric of its uniform like a wire clothes hangar trying to force its way out. Its hands, resting on the desktop, were long-fingered, and it toyed with a round, spiked ball of some kind of soft plastic material. It had the same braid worn by every other ’Sko she’d seen, but its hair was darker and flecked with bright green.

It was staring at her, just like the ’Sko in the lift. She realized that it was also one of the ones that had stared at her through the orange-hazed force field in the brig.

Finally, it spoke. “Captain. Elliot. Sit.” It motioned to a sling-type chair.

She perched warily on its edge. She didn’t want to lean back. It would be too difficult to get out of, should she have to move quickly.

Not that she thought the ’Sko had brought her here to harm her.

Not that she thought it hadn’t.

“I am Kalthrencadri. Thren. Easy more to say.”

If it was hoping she’d say “pleased to meet you” it was going to be disappointed. “Thren,” she repeated. “What do you want?”

Thren’s mouth twisted. It could be grinning or it could be a rude gesture for all she knew. “You. Know. Grantforth.”

“The whole clan? No. Just two.” She’d never met Jagan’s mother.

“Clan?” Thren repeated. The translator on its collar clacked something at him. “Yes. Family. You know Grantforth.”

“I know two Grantforths.”

“Lord Chief Secretary?”

The Conclave didn’t use titles like Lord. Maybe the ’Sko were looking to promote him for his loyal service to their cause. “Garold Grantforth. Yes.”

“And blood-kin?”

Nephew, probably. “Jagan Grantforth.”

“Lord Chief talk Beffa. Beffa talk Niyil-Pry. Lord Chief has blood-kin. Blood-kin talk Elliot. Elliot has charts. Much old. Much secret.” Thren paused. “Want.”

Anger surged through Trilby. “We offered you the damned charts!”

“Niyil-Pry. Ship talk Niyil-Pry.” Thren touched one bony finger to its chin. “Dakrahl,” it said, identifying itself. The finger next tapped the desk. “Niyil-Day.”

The
Quest
’s scanners had seen two ’Sko mother ships. But evidently even the best of Imperial technology couldn’t discern they were from competing factions, though a hazy memory came back to her of an odd formation just before Mother Two arrived. Niyil-Pry. Niyil-Day, the latter allied with the Dakrahl. She’d long known the ’Sko were deeply factionalized, had heard rumors of interfaction battles. Now she was in the middle of one. And not the one Garold Grantforth had chosen to befriend.

“Want charts,” Thren repeated.

Trilby would gladly give them the real charts, if it would bring Rhis back. It wouldn’t. But it might free them. And Carina.

Only fools think they can make deals with the ’Sko,
Rhis had told Jagan. She knew that. But using the charts was also the only option she had.

“You are Elliot?” Thren repeated.

“Yeah, I’m Elliot. I have the charts,” she said tightly. “Both sets. One’s false. One’s real. I’m the only one left alive who knows which is which. And how to decode them.”

She waited while the translator interpreted her words.

Thren’s head moved rapidly side to side. “No two sets! No two sets! Niyil-Pry data says Elliot woman has all. Woman! Kill blood-kin man, kill all men!”

Kill blood-kin. Trilby’s suppositions were confirmed. They’d wanted Jagan, and anyone working with him, dead. It was possible they didn’t even know what Jagan Grantforth looked like.
Kill all men
would assure their chances of success.

Kill all men
had ended Rhis’s life. Because of Jagan.

But Dallon was still alive. They hadn’t killed Dallon; in fact, they responded to her requests for a leg brace. . . .

Dallon Patruzius wore his hair long. Farra’s was long too. Even her own short hair was longer than Rhis’s military crop. And Yavo’s.

The ’Sko couldn’t tell human males from females. Any more than she could with them.

She kept her face impassive. “I have two sets of charts,” she repeated. “Both locked in code. I die, they die with me. You want the real one, we make a deal.”

“Deal? Deal?”

“Bargain. Agreement.”

Thren sat back, rolled the spiked ball under its hand. She fought the urge to grab the ball and cram it down its throat. “A ship. Freedom,” she continued. “For my crew back in your brig. And another woman you have. Carina, from
Bella’s Dream
.”

Thren rolled the ball, back and forth, back and forth.

Trilby waited. For once, time was on her side. The SUAs had gone out. Someone in the Conclave had picked them up.

And Rhis had ordered Demarik to engage the First Fleet, head for Syar. Imperial ships could follow a ’Sko mother ship’s ion trail. Someone had to be coming after them right now.

“You free. You break agreement. You tell military. ’Sko have charts.”

She shrugged. “But it will be too late to stop you by then, won’t it? You’ll have the complete charts, Thren. All the lost jumpgates. All the hidden meetpoints. The Conclave can guess, but they won’t know where you are.”

Thren switched the ball to the other hand, rolled it in a circular motion.

“Conclave not problem. Grantforth. Niyil-Pry. Beffa.” The thin lips grimaced. “Empire problem.”

The star charts showed meetpoints in the Empire too. Demarik had a copy of the real ones from her ship. But not Carina’s. “Compromise. Free us, give us a ship and supplies. You can escort us to a small world in Gensiira. I’ll give you coordinates. You can disable the ship’s engines. No one uses the place. Poisonous. We’ll never contact anyone. But with a ship, we can survive. That’s all I’m asking. Four lives for the charts.”

The ball stopped rolling. “Thren think much on this.”

“Think all you want.” She pushed herself out of the chair, shoved her hands in the pockets of her flight suit. She glared at the sallow-skinned creature, which toyed with the spiked ball on the desktop just as it had thoughtlessly toyed with their lives. “But every day you wait is another day you can’t get control of the Conclave. You have maybe a deuce, a trike before Lord Chief Grantforth realizes you killed his blood-kin. He’ll issue a kill order on the Dakrahl. The Niyil-Day.”

“Conclave not strong—”

“It’s not just the Conclave anymore. My ship, the people on my ship”—Trilby hesitated, sucking in a short breath to keep her voice from quivering—“the men you killed were Imperial officers. From the
Razalka.
And with the
Stegzarda
.”

The spiked ball stilled in Thren’s fingers. The small translator clacked in short, intense spurts. The ’Sko hadn’t known Khyrhis Tivahr was among the dead. She read that in Thren’s tense silence.

“The Empire
will
pursue a kill order. And you’ll be facing the Conclave and the Empire, allied against the ’Sko.” She raised her chin a little higher. “Think on that, Thren. Think on that.”

28

Rhis winced slightly as he slipped his black Imperial-issue service jacket over his flight suit. Underneath the jacket was his shoulder holster, with a pistol snugged against his right side and his left. He tugged on the weapons, making sure they were secure, then reached down to adjust the pistol strapped to his right thigh. His utility belt held four stun grenades. He tossed a spare belt with pistol and grenades to Mitkanos, sitting propped in a makeshift regen bed in Trilby’s cabin—the captain’s cabin, designed with a hidden emergency access to the cargo holds one deck below.

Mitkanos caught the belt, lay it across his lap. Some color had returned to his face, but his breathing was still labored. He wheezed when he spoke. “I should be going with you.”

“This is strictly recon. You know the Fleet never makes a move until it’s studied all angles to death.”

Mitkanos snorted. “Invasion by committee consensus.”

“Usually lack of,” Rhis agreed. He knew the
Stegzarda
’s big complaint about the Fleet was its propensity to minutely review every possible detail before taking action.

Fat lot of good that had done him this time. He’d have to add one more dictum to his team’s review process when he got back to the
Razalka
:
You’re not as smart as you think.
He’d put it right next to:
I don’t like surprises.

He grabbed the two short-barreled laser rifles, slung them over his shoulder. He glanced at his watch. “Two hours. Maybe not even that.” He’d been on ’Sko mother ships before.

“Captain Tivahr.”

Something in Mitkanos’s tone told Rhis this delay was important. That and the fact that, for the first time, the older man said his name with a touch of respect. He waited.

“Should you . . . ever decide to leave the Fleet, the
Stegzarda
would be proud to have you in our ranks.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He grinned.

“And, Captain—”

“Major?”

“May the Gods be vigilant.”

That, Rhis knew, would be nice. But he’d prefer if they simply took him off their shit list once and for all. “Dezi, you ready?”

“Absolutely, Captain Tivahr. I’m anxious to try out my new invasive accessing programs. It should be quite a challenge locating ’Sko primaries, don’t you think?”

No, that wouldn’t be the problem. The real problem would be keeping the ’Sko from noticing he’d accessed their primaries until he could take total control of their ship.

He slid through a small maintenance hatch still operative in the ruined engine room and shimmied down a landing strut into the darkened hangar bay. Dezi followed, joints well lubed and barely squeaking. His metallic skin was coated with a nonreflective layer. If he stood still, in the shadows, he might pass for a pylon.

Rhis hoped the ’droid wouldn’t have to. He intended to have them avoid ship corridors and stick to maintenance tunnels. Even if he were to acquire a blood-red ’Sko uniform, his muscular build would give him away.

Hangar bays were traditionally cavernous, honeycombed with maintenance pits and tunnels. This one was no exception. Some of the hatchways were locked, others coded. Dezi spiked in at the first panel they saw.

If his programs were flawed, they’d fail now.

It was the longest six minutes of Rhis’s life.

“Six minutes, fourteen seconds,” Dezi told him. “We should not encounter such a delay again. I now have their root security-code system in my databanks. Rather ingenious, actually. Based on an obscure musical theory that—”

“Lovely, Dez. Later.”

The tunnel was cramped, dimly lit. He half-crawled, half-sidled down its length, his chest aching. The skin surrounding the med-broche on his side itched. New skin matrix regeneration always did. Annoying. He should be used to it by now.

The tunnel widened at a cross juncture that held three square panels of databanks. Good, very good. Dezi activated the screen and found the directory. Subdirectory, really. The ’Sko would never have the ship’s main computers so easily accessible.

He looked for blackout areas in the schematics, had Dezi note them. That’s where he needed to go. That’s what he needed to find.

As soon as he found Trilby.

He’d lied to Mitkanos. This wasn’t recon. This was the mission. He’d come up against the ’Sko enough times to know he wouldn’t get a second chance.

“Deck diagrams?” he whispered harshly to the ’droid.

“Accessing. A moment, please.”

Rhis eased down on one hip, reached under his jacket, scratched at his stomach. Damned matrix.

“Partials only,” Dezi said finally. “This is a secondary dataport.”

“Display.”

The monitor on the wall flickered, changed. Lower decks only. Recyc. Six hangar bays. Brig.

Brig. That had to be where they were holding her.

He sent a small prayer to the Gods, risked bringing their attention to his plight. “Are you into their intraship?” He had to infiltrate the ’Sko’s communication systems to do what he needed next.

“Affirmative.”

He reached into his jacket, pulled out a small datapad, flipped it on. “Send out a low-level power pulse, on my signal.”

“Standing by.”

He prayed she still had her ship badge. That the ’Sko would know it was useless with his ship’s comm system destroyed in the attack, the CLS lifeless. They wouldn’t think to remove it from her, as they no doubt had her utility belt.

The badges should respond to a small ping, keyed to a narrow frequency. At least, they’d been designed to do so, for emergency locate purposes.

“Now.”

A tiny beam of energy, almost imperceptible, cascaded through the ’Sko comm system.

One ping. Two.

He drew in a quick breath, read out the IDs. FRRMNV. DLPTRZ. Farra. Dallon. In the brig, as he thought.

No Trilby.

Where in hell was she?

He looked at Dezi. “I’ve got Farra. Patruzius. Not Trilby.”

“Perhaps her ship badge is defective?”

Or they’d split them up, moved her to the other mother ship.

Bloody fucking hell. That would make life a bit more difficult for a while.

“Shall I send another pulse?”

He studied the monitor. “No. Not yet.” There was a third option, one he preferred. She was on this ship, but not in the brig. The diagram before him was truncated. Lower decks. If Garold Grantforth was involved—and Rhis had no doubt he was—Trilby would be the one the ’Sko would deal with.

She was, after all, ship’s captain. And should the ’Sko forget that fact, he also had no doubt his gutsy air sprite would be the first to remind them.

Trilby sat at the long table in the conference room and tried not to look at the dark stains smeared across the remnants of the
Quest
’s nav station. She’d told Thren where the datafiles were stored, in a subunit on the bridge. But, perhaps intending to impress her with their efficiency, the ’Sko had hauled back not only the small subunit but most of the damned nav console as well. Its warped frame, complete with the dark splatters and smears that could only be Rhis’s blood, was propped along the far wall. Conduit and optic lines trailed across the decking. Monitors sagged in their cases. Keypads were buckled.

But the stains were what she focused on.

She wondered, briefly, painfully, what they’d done with his body. Maybe she could add that to her request list. A proper burial. The ’Sko, except for the Dakrahl, had no such traditions. A dead body was a dead body. They trampled over their own crew when they attacked the
Quest
’s bridge. Tossed the dead and the injured alike down the stairwell.

Mitkanos’s body too. She’d ask for that as well. Bring them both to Avanar, bury them there. Rhis would be with her then, forever. In the large cave in the jungle where she first met him.

She swiped at a tear trickling down her cheek, turned her attention back to the screen inset in the conference table. The
Quest
’s nav banks were scrambled in the attack, but she expected as much. Told Thren it would take a while to untangle them. A careful while. There were, she warned, fail-safes.

She’d put them in herself.

“I’ll need a destination directory, a large area of blank file space to start downloading to.” She pasted her most innocent, blank look on her face. The same one she always wore when she’d look at Conclave customs inspectors and ask, “What illegal cargo?”

She saw Thren hesitate. She was asking for access to its ship’s computer banks, and the ’Sko knew it. It leaned back in its chair, at the far end of the table. The spiked ball lay motionless in front of it.

“Why not old unit?” It pointed to the wreckage in the corner.

“Because, number one, it’s damaged. Number two, that damage has severely limited its capacity. And number three, the files are larger than the remaining capacity. I could load them compressed, but then we’re risking major data corruption if I run out of space.”

It was one of the few things she told Thren that was true. If it didn’t believe her, it could have its techs scan the unit.

It had, she knew, two options. It could let her load directly to the ship’s computers. That’s what she wanted. Or it could wait, dig up a portable unit with sufficient capacity, and lock her out of the systems.

She didn’t want that.

She needed in to the ’Sko’s computers. In to their primaries. She was going to give them Herkoid’s star charts, suitably customized by the late Captain Khyrhis Tivahr. But she was also going to give them something else.

Surprise.

Thren chattered on intraship. High-pitched, grating Ycskrite noises answered back. Trilby waited, stared at her hands, at the tabletop, at the wide starfield through the circular viewport—anywhere but the broken nav console.

They were moving on the sublight engines now, after one brief hyperspace jump. She didn’t recognize the stars, but then, ’Sko space was not her territory. Thren had requested Avanar’s coordinates. Evidently they had their own ways of getting into Gensiira.

Carina’s presence on this ship proved as much.

She had no idea why the ’Sko had kept Carina alive. Or Dallon and Farra, for that matter. Generosity and leniency were not words associated with the ’Sko. If they did something, it was because it benefited them, and only them, in some way.

And when something no longer did, they were brutal. Ruthless.

It was questionable whether the ’Sko would release them, leave them alive on Avanar. She felt they would only if they were sure—and once they saw the corrosive atmosphere of the jungles, who wouldn’t be?—that they’d never leave. Their survival would depend on whatever ship the ’Sko gave them as shelter. Even
Shadow’s Quest
would do. With the spare parts she’d accumulated over years of salvage and had carefully sealed and stored in the cavern, she knew she—with Dallon’s, Farra’s, and Carina’s help—could rebuild the
Quest
. Definitely get her comm pack working. Someone, sooner or later, would find them.

But if the ’Sko didn’t, if they reneged on their agreement with her—

It wouldn’t matter. Rhis was dead. But his handiwork, and hers, would live on forever in this ship’s systems, destroying it and, she knew, every other ’Sko ship it communicated with.

Thren stood suddenly, shaking its long face side to side. “Chance? Chance. Trust. Need charts.” It walked down the length of the table, leaned over her screen. It inserted one finger into an ID slot, then stroked three lines of code that appeared.

She watched the symbols flow by.

Ycskrite! Damn it, it was all in Ycskrite. Bloodbat droppings, for all she knew.

Thren pointed. “There.”

She shook her head. “I don’t read your language. I need to work with binary addresses. That’s the only way I can get the charts to interface with your systems. At the binary level.”

It spun around, slapped at the intership on the table, clacked out a long, angry-sounding sentence.

Within minutes, the conference-room doors slid open. Another tall, thin, red-uniformed ’Sko hurried in. Its braid, a yellowish-green, bobbled.

Thren screeched, clacked, screeched some more.

The tech—Trilby assumed it was a tech—whined in response.

Trilby shut it out, practiced saying
good, better, best
in Zafharish in her mind.
Good, better, best. Good, better, best.
She looked at Thren.

Worm fodder.

The tech wriggled its thin face, scurried toward her. It motioned her out of her seat, slid in when she vacated it. One finger in the side of the monitor, ID confirmed. Stroke, stroke, stroke.

Second ID input. More stroking.

Thren screeched.

The tech looked startled. Stroked the screen faster.

Trilby stood behind it, arms folded across her chest.

And saw numbers. Lovely, beautiful, need-no-translation numbers.

The tech screeched happily, looked at Thren.

Thren looked at her. “Now? You do.”

The tech stood, moved out of her way.

Trilby sat. “Now. I do.”

She began to slowly, methodically open and decode the charts. Deliberately, she chose the longest, most complex ones. Thren watched over her shoulder, and she hummed the tune to “good, better, best” while she worked.