Ruler of Naught (34 page)

She watched until the Arkad finished the last of his drink,
blinked, and fought back a yawn. “Truce! I don’t want to face Jaim again
without some rack time.” He left.

Lokri levered himself up, and sauntered out with a fair
semblance of his usual insouciance. He gave Marim a wry grimace, or maybe it
was a smile. Hard to tell, with his face so bruised up. He left without a word.

Marim knew better than to say anything, not with Lokri in
that mood. She was about to order up something to eat when the emergence tone
sounded. She punched up caf instead, and decided to wander to the bridge. A
slow, standard approach would be less dull than sitting here alone.

She let herself out, and almost collided with Jaim, who was
hustling in the direction of the bridge. Had the captain bozzed him, without
alerting anyone else?

Instantly intrigued, Marim followed behind, grinning when
Montrose swung out of the dispensary almost on her heels.

The three of them entered the bridge. Vi’ya closed the hatch
and tabbed her console. Marim strongly suspected that she’d blocked coms with
the rest of the ship. Vi’ya then turned her black gaze Marim’s way.

Marim bit her lip, then relaxed as the captain lifted one
shoulder in a faint shrug. “Jackers,” she said. “The tong emergency code was
buried in the welcome message.”

“So you have to help?” Marim asked.

“That is the promise Markham and I made when we were adopted
into the tong,” Vi’ya said, briefly sketching a symbol in the air.

Jaim gave a short nod of agreement, his chimes clinking
mournfully.

Vi’ya said, “I have been gathering data. There isn’t much. Although
there doesn’t seem to be a fleet here, I do not know what we are facing. Only
that it has to be serious, if the Changs could not deal with it internally. So I
propose to take the Arkad and Schoolboy along. We may need the extra hands, and
I do not think either of them would be willing to leave the old man behind,
even were they foolish enough to think they find refuge here.”

“What if the Arkad’s recognized?” asked Marim

“We’ll put them in domino—I think we still have some in
general storage. When we’re finished here, get them awake and ready. Give them
boswells.” She turned to Montrose.

“Jaim will put the ship in defense mode and slave it to you
in the dispensary so you can keep an eye on Ivard and the old man.”

The surgeon nodded.

“Plan?” Jaim asked.

“This is what I’m thinking...”

o0o

Osri jerked awake at the sound of rapping on the cabin hatch.

“What is it?” Brandon muttered from the other bunk, as the
dog curled up at his feet looked up, ears pricked.

“Me!” Marim’s cheerful voice piped, somewhat muffled, from
the corridor.

Brandon sat up in bed and shook his head. Osri caught a
stale whiff of alcohol: the Aerenarch had been drinking. Again. Osri pulled on
his trousers and a tunic, and as the rapping sounded again, he slapped the hatch
control.

Outside Marim stood, grinning with excitement as she hopped
out of the way to let the dog trot out.

“Marim,” Brandon greeted her, rubbing his eyes, his voice
husky. “It’d better be a flank attack from Eusabian—or a time bomb at the
least—or I am going to murder you and sleep on the remains.”

Marim grinned. “We’re comin’ into Granny Chang’s, and Vi’ya
says there’s trouble.”

“I thought her talents were strictly short-range.”

“Are. But she ‘n’ Markham were made honorary members of
Granny’s tong and she says the welcome message has a tong emergency code hidden
in it. Jackers.”

“Tong?” Osri asked.

Marim’s face swung toward him, but she turned back to
Brandon before she answered. “Some sort of gang, generations old.” Marim
shrugged. “Anyway, we gotta help or we’re stuck here for good—not enough fuel
to go anywhere else safe. Montrose has to guard Firehead ‘n’ the old man, and
hold the con, so you two are backup. Get dressed, Arkad,” she added, giving
Brandon an appreciative up-down. “We’ve got caf waiting.” She whisked herself
out.

Osri stayed in the middle of the floor, uncertain.

Brandon got out of bed, rubbing his eyes. “We’re being recruited
to defend this place against jackers, not Panarchists.”

“What difference between these Rifters and some other
group?” Osri muttered under his breath.

Brandon did not answer as he reached for his clothes.

Osri did not pursue the issue. “What I find difficult to
comprehend is why I should be included at all, unless this is some sort of
ruse to get me killed.”

Brandon looked amused. “If they wanted you dead, you would
have taken a walk out of a lock long ago. They’re short-handed, and they know
you’re adequate at sim-fighting, so they are hoping you’re as good in a real
fight.”

Osri felt a mixture of gratification and annoyance. “If
she’s right and the danger is jackers, then this ship is in jeopardy—”

“—and your father. If that will assuage your lacerated sense
of duty,” Brandon said, pulling on his boots, “regard it as true.” He got to
his feet, then paused. “And if you were considering pulling a serial-chip stunt
like using your jac against the captain, remember that both she and the Eya’a
will know before you hit the firing stud.”

Osri opened his mouth to protest, but Brandon was already
out the hatch.

“Here’s our nicks,” Marim greeted them when they reached the
rec room. She handed each of them a steaming cup.

Osri saw the somber-faced Jaim sitting at a table. Near
them, a hateful smile on his lips, was Lokri. One of his arms was in a cast,
and bruises marked his face.

Osri remembered what he had read in the Starfarer’s Handbook
and looked away quickly.

“Boz’ls for you two,” Marim said, handing them out.

As Osri strapped his on, he noted that it was the very
latest, most expensive kind, with neural induction. He fought the sense of
relief he felt having a boswell again. The urge to start recording everything
had to be ignored. He knew he would not be permitted to keep this one, and
anything he loaded into it would probably be downloaded by the captain later.

“Jacs,” came Montrose’s voice from behind.

Osri was given a standard weapon, a worn Dogstar LVI, which
he checked the charge on before he slipped the holster on, and shrugged it into
place. With that unfamiliar-yet-familiar binding, he felt a strange sense of
unreality: before the sim practices imposed on him by the Rifters, the last
time he had handled such a weapon had been in the Academy back on Minerva.
Which
is probably radioactive slag by now.

Marim had picked a jac of an unfamiliar design. Although it
wasn’t quite as bulky as the two-hander Montrose favored, its barrel was
longer, with a small canister just forward of the trigger, and two folding projections.
hinged near the aperture, that he couldn’t identify. She carried it on her
back, barrel down. The others also had individualized weapons; he did not
recognize the make of the stiletto-like jac that Lokri carried.

“I thought Chang’s was a bubbloid,” Brandon said. “Wouldn’t
these be a bad idea?” He pointed at his weapon, a twin to Osri’s, which still
lay on the table before him.

“Granny’s is all up-to-date, so we can use jacs—not like
Rifthaven,” Marim said.

Osri drank gratefully from his cup. He breathed deeply,
feeling the stimulant burn away the sleep from his head. As he lowered the cup
a gentle scraping thump resonated through the ship, followed by a louder clank
from the direction of the nearby lock. They were docked.

“But how does she know the so-called jackers aren’t Panarchists?”
he muttered to Brandon.

Marim laughed, splattering caf on the table. “At Granny
Chang’s? About half her gee-nth grandchildren are nicks! Changs have always had
one foot on either side of the Rift.”

Gee-nth?
Then Granny Chang was a real person, which
meant she must be a nuller. Very few people ever adapted to permanent null-gee,
but those who did often lived long enough to see many generations of their
children.

Then he remembered the magister Roderik Chang at the
Academy, who taught courses in the spiritual dimensions of warfare.
Is he
one of Granny’s children?

“What’s the matter, Arkad, caf not kickin’ in?”

“It will,” Brandon said. His expression was bemused.

Osri wondered if he, too, was contemplating with an equal
lack of enthusiasm the possibility of violence—and then remembered again with
a jolt of anger that Brandon had led these people on a raid against his own
home on Arthelion.

But Dol’jharians were holding it, not our people,
Osri
reminded himself. This second jolt threw him off balance. Unable to deal with
it, he turned his thoughts to the future.

I’ll be off this ship, and I’ll have a weapon. So where
would I go, if I decided to flee? I’m certainly not likely to join whoever’s
jacking Granny Chang’s. They’re not being stupidly trusting to give us
weapons—they’re being expedient.
The sense of unreality increased, and for
the first time in his life, he felt the urge to laugh at himself.

“What’s the plan?” Lokri drawled, strapping his weapon on
one-handed with a dexterity that indicated he’d be able to handle himself,
broken arm notwithstanding.

“This is it—”

Marim described the basic layout of Granny’s bubbloid, a
habitat formed by injecting a metallic asteroid with volatiles and melting it
to blow it into spherical form. There was slightly less than standard gee
inside at the equator and null-gee at the poles, where ships docked, and in the
center where Granny lived and did her trading. They’d be using the boswells in
covert mode, walking in as if unaware of any problems—and then they’d have to
improvise.

Halfway through her outline Vi’ya joined them, her long tail
of space-black hair wound into a tight knot. When she turned her head slightly
as she tossed two items onto the table before Osri, he saw faint lines of
tightness around her eyes, and a darkish tinge to her lower eyelids.

Osri’s gaze strayed to Lokri, to observe no reaction in his
face at her appearance.

Vi’ya said to Osri, “You two will wear these.” She indicated
the dark cloth items on the table.

Brandon picked one up and Osri was amazed to see a formal
court domino. With a quick gesture, Brandon pulled the gold-embroidered black
velvet over his head, adjusting it with tugs until it lay smoothly, obscuring
the top of his head. Only his square chin was exposed, and his mouth, which
quirked at the corners, rendering him unrecognizable to anyone who did not
know him well.

Osri picked up the other domino, a blue one with scarlet
leaves sewn in a diagonal pattern across it. He had never seen the sort of
establishment which High Douloi preferred to visit disguised. He pulled the
silk-lined cloth over his head, feeling peculiar. It was
expensively made, with adaptive eye slits. Surely such were not standard Rifter
equipment.

Brandon was looking down at his hands, his face pensive, and
Osri remembered.
It seems we are destined to follow Markham’s path through
the Thousand Suns for a time.
He blinked; his peripheral vision opened back
up as the mask adapted. Then he dropped his hands surreptitiously to his
boswell.

Marim said, “Let’s go!”

Vi’ya led the way out, and as the others followed, Osri
quickly tapped his boswell, offering Brandon a privacy:
(Do they fear we’ll
find allies, after all?)

(They fear someone wanting to collect the prices on our
heads should Eusabian have distributed bonus chips to his fleet,)
Brandon
returned with acidic humor that Osri felt viscerally.

A price on our heads?
At
every step the sense of unreality increased. Osri found himself wishing he were
back in the galley, stirring a twenty-spice Hulann delicacy and fending off the
attentions of Lucifur and the dogs.

Brandon fell in step beside the captain. “What do the Eya’a
make of all this?” he asked.

Vi’ya said, “They are fascinated by the concept of an
inside-out world, and they seem to find Granny’s age incomprehensible.”

As they passed near the dispensary on the way to the lock,
Osri heard the strongly marked triple beat of a waltz, which added to the sense
that reality had permanently slipped.

Marim touched her finger to her wrist with a wry gesture.

Ivard’s Kelly band.
Osri remembered having heard that
the Kelly, not surprisingly, were indifferent to all human music save the
waltz. The idea that Montrose had to play this music for the boy made Osri feel
slightly queasy, and he wondered what other effects that band was having on
him.

They reached the lock, where the Eya’a were already waiting.
For the first time they were wearing something other than those translucent
garments with the micro-fine patterns woven in. In fact, Osri could only
recognize them because he knew there were no other sentients that small on
board. The Eya’a were swallowed up in coarse robes of a dull gray color, with
rumpled hoods pulled over their heads. The fronts of the hoods were held shut
by a metal screen with an ornate swirling pattern in it. The outfits were
vaguely familiar; he’d seen them on a chip.

“Azuni Oblates from Pimenti,” said Vi’ya, smiling faintly.

“A useful disguise for this kind of situation,” Brandon countered
with easy humor, “the Oblates being—as I recall—famed for their insistence on
nonviolence.” He regarded the swathed form nearest him with a mock-critical
air. “Although he, or it, or she, seems a little tall for a Pimenti.”

“She,” Vi’ya corrected. “They’re both females. Their mate
never leaves their colony.”

Discussing Eya’a biology increased the unreality to the
boundaries of farce. Osri fought against an irrational urge to laugh as he
fingered his weapon’s unfamiliar weight against his hip.