Revolution's Shore (2 page)

“Check,” said Pinto.

Bolyai's hands trembled as he gripped the back of the navigator's chair. Tobias cursed fluently.

“Oh, tup yourself, Tobias,” said Jenny genially. “They say if you vector wrong you end up in Paradise. What are you worried about? It's the only way you'll ever get there.”

“Captain!” The comm man gasped. “Cruiser is banking for fire.”

“Seven ought six. Seven ought seven point eight. Three forty-six bits. Three forty-seven. Three forty-seven.”

“I've got surges,” swore the man at comm. “They've fired. We'll never make it.”

“Three forty-seven. Closing imperative. Seven ought eight point one. Three forty-eight. Break.”

“We will,” breathed Lily.

They went through.

Behind, the hunter trailed her by scent, inexorable, nearing. However far she fled, however faint her trail grew, it would pursue, until at last she would turn to see its face.

And came out.

“Perfect,” hissed the sta.

Lily turned. The lift door slid open to reveal Kyosti. He stared directly at her, almost as if he had been watching her even through the metal of the door. She shuddered, shaking off the vision, but as it faded she remembered with greater clarity their last trip on the
Easy Virtue
, when he had moved across a cabin inside a window.

An impossible act, and in time she had let herself believe she had imagined it. Except that now—surely he had been in the mess, or in their cabin. Could he possibly move so far in a space that lasted no more than an instant for everyone else? What if he had reached her before they had come out of the window?

He did not move out of the lift.

“I have Jungfrau beacon,” said the man at comm. “Holy Void. That's the tightest vector I've ever shipped. We skipped Joch system completely.” He turned disbelieving eyes on the sta navigator. “Did you know this window would skip us so far?”

The sta merely unfurled her crest so that it glittered, bronze, in the glare of the lights. “Yes,” she breathed, sibilant. “I saw the Ridani's touch on the first vector we rode through. It was our only chance, but I believed.” She rose, uncurling her great height, and flattened her crest as she faced Pinto. “You are a master.” The gesture embodied formal respect.

Pinto unstrapped and laid a delicate hand on the softly humming board. “Thank you,” he murmured.

Tobias flung himself out of his chair and shouldered past Kyosti, who was in his turn forced to step out onto the bridge as Tobias commandeered the lift and vanished from sight.

Captain Bolyai sat down in the vacant chair. He had gone pale again, and his hands were slick with perspiration. “I've never had to run before,” he whispered. His breathing came ragged. “Not like that. Circumspection is all one needs.” He swiveled to glare at Jenny. “I want you all off my ship. I
said
no troublemaking on this boat, and I meant it. No attracting attention.
All
of you off.”

Lily glanced at Jenny, but the mercenary had fallen silent, quiet, as if only by not speaking could she keep her anger in check. “This system is no more than a beacon,” Lily countered, meeting Bolyai's gaze. “With a rotating crew. They don't even have life support for so many.”

Bolyai dropped his eyes to examine the boards. Pinto was smiling, a look of mocking cynicism. The sta sighed and sat back down at her station, beginning calculations anew.

“I'll drop you,” began Bolyai in a low voice. “Name your system. You deserve that much at least, getting us out of Arcadia system. But all of you have to go. I won't have trouble on the
Virtue
.”

“All right,” agreed Lily. Bolyai let out a held breath, as if her acquiescence came as a surprise to him. “Harsh.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We want to go to Harsh.”

He turned several new shades of pale. “Void, woman, that planet is a prison.”

“I know.”

“There are several fine Stations where a fugitive can find employment, safety, money—”

“Harsh,” she repeated.

He sighed, but he did not protest further. “Very well. Harsh it is.” He motioned to the sta. “Start running a route. As
short
as possible.”

The sta's fingers raced over the keypad, setting a course.

“Harsh? Have you lost your tanks, Lily-hae?” Jenny sat down on the bunk in Lily's cabin, where they had retreated from Bolyai's resentment and anger.

“I'm sorry.” Lily stood by the door, her attention on Jenny, but her glance resting at intervals on Kyosti, who reclined on what little floor space was left. Above, on the top bunk, the sphere that was Bach drifted a finger's breadth above the mattress. “I'm sorry,” Lily repeated. “I never meant to get you and Lia and Gregori thrown off.”

Jenny shrugged. “Bolyai's a coward. I'm amazed he let a tattoo pilot the
Virtue
, but we were in such a rush to get out of Central—and no one on first shift had Tobias's idiotic objections—that he had to use what he had. Now that the shock's worn off, he'll take it out on whoever's easiest to blame. When our last pilot tried to fly on ambergloss and almost ran us into the next life, he tossed off our second engineer with her, since they were bunkmates. He looks for someone else to blame for his own nerves. We'll be all right.”

“Come with us,” Lily offered.

“To Harsh? Into the hands of Central's troops, who would gladly arrest us, lock Gregori and I away in the mines, and send Lia back to her family? I think not.”

Bach,
Lily whistled. Bach rose, lights flashing, and drifted down to hover beside his mistress.
Plug into the screen.

Jenny raised her eyebrows, puzzled, but said nothing.

Bach began to sing in fine four-part counterpoint. Figures came up on screen and shifted to new figures as he paged through his memory.

“Master Heredes is dead, Jenny.” Lily's voice came out flat, suppressing her grief. “Murdered, by Central. That's why we're going to join Jehane.”

“Jehane! I never took you for a revolutionary.”

Lily hesitated. “I'm not sure I am one. But Central will pay, Jenny. They're the ones who murdered Heredes. And my friend Robbie—you might know him as Pero—made me. Understand that Central is corrupt. They won't give up their power voluntarily. I think Jehane's revolution is the best chance, maybe the only one, that Reft space has to have a fair government.”

Kyosti, unmoving on the floor, regarded Lily with no obvious expression.

“I can accept that.” Jenny ran a finger over the tight nap of her hair. “But why Harsh?”

“Because according to information Heredes sent to me—to Robbie, really—” Lily shook her head. “It's a long story. But Jehane is moving on Harsh. I fully expect that when we reach there, Jehane's troops will be in control.”

“Why would Jehane want Harsh? One blazing inferno of a moon orbiting a methane hell of a planet, producing ore and fuel and tell-chips with what amounts to slave labor working under killing conditions. Or at least that's what you hear over the nets.”

“What do you think he wants? He wants those prisoners. They have every reason to hate Central. They'll join Jehane without a second glance.”

“Fine army,” muttered Jenny. “I'll remember not to turn my back on any of them.”

“Does that mean you'll come with us?”

Jenny laughed. “I'm no revolutionary. But why do you want me, Lily-hae? Aliasing and Gregori are more burden than asset, much as I love them.”

“There must be something Lia can do.”

Jenny considered this seriously. “She can cook.”

“There you are. Two reasons, Jenny. First, I have a debt to pay—a girl who got indentured to Harsh because of me. I intend to find her. And second, I'll join Jehane. You know that I met him once. It's not so much that I didn't trust him, but that he—scared me.”

“
Scared
you?”

Lily could only shake her head. “I'm not sure what I mean. Maybe I don't trust my own reaction to him. He's very—powerful. In any case, when I join him, I want some negotiating power to set my own assignment. And the more people I have with me who have skills he can use, the more leverage I'll have. You're a mercenary—and trained as an Immortal, no less. Pinto's a pilot—and one of the best, tattoo or not. Kyosti's a doctor. Lia can cook. And Bach—”

Bach sang three notes and a three-dimensional star grid, interlocked by a complex interweaving of lines, came up on the screen.

“The most recent information out of Central's military intelligence computers. Jehane's movements. Interpreted by Heredes and by Bach, they suggest that he is moving to take Harsh. And I have barely scratched the surface of what Bach has accessed from Central's computer-net. I have Bach, Jenny. Therefore, Jehane wants me. That's what I'll negotiate with.”

Kyosti's eyes had not wavered from Lily's face. His lips arced into the barest of smiles.

Jenny grinned and stood up. She examined Kyosti a moment, taking in the studied nonchalance of his posture that revealed instead the complete focus of his attention. Lily waited, expectant, but not tense with it—in control, rather, as if the precise situation of her body illuminated the relationship between these three people and one robot in the room.

“Lily-hae Ransome.” Jenny shook her head, started again. “You've changed.”

“It's Heredes now. Lilyaka Ash Heredes.”

“That must be it.” Jenny gave her a mock salute. “I'll go pack our bags.”

As the door closed behind the mercenary, Bach began to -sing

Schaut hin, dort liegt im finstern Stall,

Des Herrschaft gehet überall!

Da Speise vormals sucht ein Rind,

Da ruhet itzt der Jungfrau'n Kind.

Behold here: there in a dark stable lies

the One who has dominion over all.

Where, before, an ox sought food,

there now rests the Virgin's Child.

T
HEY SWUNG INTO ORBIT
far from the regularly trafficked routes into Harsh Station. An eerie silence had deadened the usual communications channels: what scraps of talk the
Virtue
caught on comm bore the stamp of patchworked equipment and illicit, brief messages planetside leaking out through Harsh's killing atmosphere. Other vessels littered the in-system lanes, but whether they were silent by choice, or through destruction, it proved impossible to tell, their orbits being in any case too distant for visual scanning.

The
Virtue
drifted at low power for an entire revolution of the planet, a ghost on the fringe of Station's net, and listened. At last Captain Bolyai gathered up his courage, egged on by his rapidly deteriorating nerves, and decided to shuttle Lily and her people down to the surface and leave them there.

It was a quiet group that boarded the small shuttle. Jenny came first, in full rig, weapons strapped about her and a pack on her back that contained everything she possessed. She held with one hand the small hand of her son, Gregori, who carried a small replica of her pack; behind them followed the slight figure of Aliasing, Jenny's companion, lover, and fellow fugitive. Lia wore clothing a little too rich for the
Virtue
's faded hull, and carried not a backpack, but a finely brocaded bag of some organic fiber, an obvious relic of wealth in a past existence. Her dark hair framed her piquant face as mists frame a waterfall.

Pinto already sat at the controls of the shuttle, speaking in a low voice to the bridge several decks away. The geometric pattern of tattoos that covered his face shifted color as the lock light blinked on and off with each entry. He turned at the sound of Aliasing's soft voice, and her gaze caught his, and they both smiled: an expression that illuminated each face in turn, for a moment seeming to brighten the dim interior of the shuttle.

After Aliasing, Kyosti entered, then Bach, and last, sealing the hatch, came Lily. She went forward to sit beside Pinto, flipping on the comm-station as the engines began to rumble to life beneath them.

“Jenny,” she said over her shoulder, “which is the broadband link?”

“Two interlinked circles—”

“Oh, I see. And the focused beam is the arrow, and I can patch to incoming with the—yes, I see.”

“What's going to happen to the shuttle once we're down?” asked Aliasing.

Jenny shook her head. “Bolyai is cutting his losses and running as soon as we detach.”

“But—” Aliasing began to speak, lost impulse to a quaver in her voice, and began again. “But what if the planet's abandoned?”

“We know it isn't abandoned,” said Lily. “We've got some radio traffic—but Station is down. I don't know what's going on down there, or at Harsh Station, for that matter. We'll have to play it as it goes.”

This silenced Aliasing. Kyosti finished stowing their packs and containers and belted himself in at the back.

“Detach sequence.” Pinto's voice was cool, but his hands trembled slightly at the controls.

The shuttle gave a roll, yawed to one side, and then they hit free weight for the drift away from the
Virtue
. Its colorless bulk receded in the single viewport, and Pinto brought the engines to thrust and pointed the ship into its descent.

The ride through the upper atmosphere was rough. Lily monitored radio traffic, but kept broadcast silence. Abruptly they hit calm like a sheet of stillness and banked into a smoother descent. Pinto kept up a quiet murmur of altitude checks and Lily began to attempt to get a fix on Harsh Main Block, the center of Harsh's tight mesh of surveillance and prison administration.

Through static and the whirring noise of the shuttle's venting fans voices filtered, scraps of communications passing along the planet's surface.