Warring States Read online

  Robert St. Clare had known Curran, a man Stildyne himself had never met. Up until quite recently he had been half-convinced that he hated Koscuisko’s Emandisan bond-involuntary for the affection with which Koscuisko remembered him.

  But then he’d analyzed Koscuisko’s back-sheath bit by minute bit on the thula during their trip from Azanry back to the Ragnarok after the assault on Koscuisko these weeks gone past, though. There was no way in which the catch could have slipped, no explanation for how the knife had fallen free and into Koscuisko’s hand when he lay helpless at the mercy of his enemy. For Koscuisko’s life, Stildyne could forgive the dead man the fact that Koscuisko loved him.

  “No, it’ll be all right,” Stildyne said, still surprised when Koscuisko used his personal name. They’d had words about it. Cultural differences. Koscuisko was trying to observe Stildyne’s preference, at the expense of his own behavioral expectations; staggering. The effort said more to Stildyne about the value that Koscuisko placed on him than the use of his personal name could touch, satisfying though that was. “They’re Bonds. They might have been his shipmates if things had been different. You know how they look after one another.”

  It had been a good thing to say, apparently. Koscuisko seemed to relax all at once, and smiled very cheerfully. “A telling point,” Koscuisko agreed. “Thank you. If we are not careful First Officer will leave without us, let’s hurry.”

  Mendez’ business was with the depot master. Emandis Station had declined to pre-clear for load-out without a personal visit. She was well within her rights to do so — it was munitions that the Ragnarok was after, and in significant quantity — but they were all unhappily suspicious that she was simply stalling for as long as she could. Scylla was in route, with three attendant corvettes. If Emandis Station held them here until Scylla arrived, and Scylla was unfriendly . . .

  Scylla wouldn’t lay a finger on them. The Ragnarok’s legal status was unresolved, but the fact that Captain ap Rhiannon had lodged a formal and acknowledged appeal was not in question. There were no Fleet intelligence groups at Emandis Station. Emandis Station was run by the Emandis home defense fleet, EHDS, as a semi-autonomous enterprise under contract to provision Fleet and license to obtain and store controlled items.

  Fleet couldn’t put an interrogations group down without permission. And Jennet ap Rhiannon had made herself clear on allship: they had nothing to hide or to explain; they would stay out of trouble, and trouble would stay away from them. If Fleet wanted to wrangle with the Ragnarok, it would need a pretext to do so, when it was in a home defense fleet depot. Their captain expected them all to refrain from supplying one.

  Stildyne followed Koscuisko to the mover where Mendez sat waiting, and they were off for the depot’s administrative center. Emandisan Station was clean and bright and beautiful, standing several hours off of Emandis itself and rejoicing in a generated atmosphere — a very gracious grid — and all of the amenities for rest and recreation of crews in transit. It was a short ride down wide tree-lined lanes from the docking site to the depot master’s office. Koscuisko said little, watching the planet high overhead; Mendez nothing at all.

  The depot master’s office when they got there was small but well-furnished, very clearly the workspace of a busy woman who had neither time nor patience for external rank-signals. The depot master rose to her feet as they were buzzed through to her office, nodding her head once in response to Mendez’ formal greeting; but let Mendez know straightaway that there were to be some issues to resolve.

  “Your Excellency,” she said. She didn’t sit down; she didn’t suggest they sit, either. “I’m sorry you had this trip for nothing, sir. Emandis Station cannot release this stores manifest.”

  In fact First Officer had come in person because Emandis Station had already suggested that it could not release the requested stores. Jennet ap Rhiannon did not take “no” for an answer, unless it were in response to “Any problem with that?” Mendez was clearly not at all surprised at the depot master’s claim; he folded his hands in front of him and protested: quietly, calmly, logically.

  “Our requisitions are all Fleet-standard, Depot. And I need those stores. Especially the munitions. On what grounds do you decline to execute your mission and release these supplies?”

  Now she sat down slowly, and invited Mendez to rest himself with a gesture of her hand. She wasn’t Emandisan, Stildyne decided; so much was obvious. She was tall and almost blond and a little sun-burnt; all of the Emandisan that Stildyne had seen represented were slender people, not tall, dark-eyed and dark-complected. Singularly elegant and superlatively self-disciplined, which was not to say that the depot master wasn’t.

  “Release of replacement equipment must be accompanied by surrender of the equipment it is to replace, your Excellency, you know that.” Polite, but inflexible. A civil servant from somewhere else in Brisinje, perhaps, responsible for the depot and very sure of her procedures. “You have failed to present appropriately endorsed waiver documents. Unless you carry them with you for surrender here and now I cannot release the munitions you demand.”

  Koscuisko hadn’t been explicitly invited to sit down, but he did so, quietly and unobtrusively. Stildyne stood. The only time he sat down in the presence of his officer of assignment was when they were playing cards in quarters after shift. Or in the sauna. Or when Koscuisko came to his tiny cell of an office, which did not happen often.

  “You are in receipt of a preliminary copy of our duly logged exception document,” Mendez noted, mildly. “It’s at the headquarters of the home defense fleet even now. We don’t want to create any friction here, depot master, but we need our stores. My Captain doesn’t want to see me back without them.”

  The Ragnarok needed guns. It was an experimental test-bed that had never been issued its full complement — or if the artillery had been issued it had never been delivered, much less installed. Maybe it was being held somewhere for the day when the Ragnarok would be formally commissioned as a ship of war. Or maybe someone had sold it off on the invisible market. That was how the Ragnarok had acquired the single battle cannon it could deploy, after all — they had liberated it from the invisible market, where it had been sitting in inventory as a case of deck-wipes.

  The rest of the stores would be welcome, but as it was the ship could not defend itself against more than one or two of the warships in its weight class if Fleet decided to assert itself. Shooting their way out of Taisheki Station had been an act of mutiny — technically speaking, anyway.

  “You know the exception report must be endorsed at Fleet headquarters level, your Excellency, the home defense fleet’s authority in this instance is limited. I cannot in all good conscience release a primary equipment load of this level without more explicit instructions, First Officer, I trust you will forgive me. Will that be all? Your crew will be welcome to stand down for rest and recreation, of course, once your bond has been — excuse me.”

  One of the alerts on the depot master’s desk had gone off, blinking at her with a brilliant blue urgency. Frowning, she keyed her receive; whoever it was, whatever it was, she started to say something as if angrily, glanced quickly at First Officer and Koscuisko sitting in her office, decided against saying a word. She didn’t speak. She closed the comm with a sharp and irritated gesture and stood up, her chair rolling back to hit the wall behind her and bounce forward again in reaction to the vigor of her action.

  “Excuse me,” she repeated; and quit the room without another word. Very strange. Mendez looked back over his shoulder at Stildyne and Koscuisko alike, then put his hands to the arms of his chair, clearly preparing to leave.

  “We’ll have to consult the captain,” Mendez said. “I don’t care to go back without a loading schedule. No reason to put you through that, though, Andrej, you’re already cleared for planetfall at Jeltaria. Why don’t you and Stildyne just — ”

  The door to the depot master’s office opened, and someone entirely different came in. An Emandisan. In
the uniform of the home defense fleet; if Stildyne knew his rank markers, this was a senior officer, in the logistics branch. Stores and supplies. The officer seemed to hesitate, very slightly, as he passed the place where Koscuisko — who was looking a little confused, from Stildyne’s angle on him — still sat in his chair; but continued toward the desk with such brisk dispatch that Stildyne decided he’d imagined it.

  “We’re in receipt of your requisition, your Excellency,” the Emandisan said. His Standard was perfect. “Also of the exception document. I’ve been instructed to treat it as a fully endorsed Fleet instrument. We can begin to load out in five hours’ time, will that be acceptable?”

  First Officer settled back in his chair, warily, looking if anything even more uncertain than Koscuisko. “Very acceptable, and thank you. But this would seem to be a reversal of sorts. A man can’t help but feel a little concerned, what’s going on?”

  It could be a trap, Stildyne supposed. Yet what could the Emandisan home defense fleet have against the Ragnarok? The quarrel ap Rhiannon had with the Fleet was just that — with the Jurisdiction Fleet. Home defense fleets tended to keep well clear of any Jurisdiction entanglements.

  “Depot master Seprayan is a very conservative administrator,” the Emandisan agreed. “Intelligence indicates however that it is not reasonable in this case to demand surrender of resources never issued. We will cover it with Fleet if we have to.”

  It sounded reasonable enough, if not for the fact that moments ago the depot master had been adamantly unreasonable about it. Taking a clearly determined breath Mendez challenged the reversal head-on. “To what do we owe this unusual accommodation, Mark Captain?”

  Mark captain. That was right, Stildyne thought, impressed. He hadn’t taken the spacing of the bands across the man’s right shoulder into account.

  “In all the history of Emandis there has never until now been an alien who has worn Emandisan steel,” the mark captain said, looking at Koscuisko almost hungrily before focusing his attention back on Mendez. “As you may be aware, First Officer, a knife-fighter’s five-knives are cultural artifacts that we consider to be of defining importance. A man was wronged. We owe it to his knives to make it up to him, any way we can, and an officer assigned to the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok is the lawful custodian of those knives; who can expect every cooperation from Emandis Station, accordingly.”

  Koscuisko had sat forward and was staring at his boots, with his hands folded in front of him and the knuckles showing white. Mendez eyed Koscuisko a little cautiously before he responded to this rather startling, if welcome, statement.

  “I see, Mark Captain. Very well, we’ll be glad to take advantage. Doctor Koscuisko has been cleared for transit to Emandis proper, to the city of Jeltaria. We were hoping for a local pilot.”

  There was an unusual sort of tension in the mark captain’s voice as he replied. “The local pilot who was scheduled to perform that service has been delayed at Brisinje, your Excellency.” He was talking to Koscuisko now, Stildyne realized, not Mendez at all, and Mendez outranked Koscuisko. But didn’t seem to mind. “We have another man waiting. We’re sorry. We understand how anxious you must be to meet your brother, and he you; but it can’t be helped. He is a pilot first and a man with family second, as are we all.”

  Koscuisko’s brother? Stildyne frowned. He hadn’t realized that Koscuisko had any brothers in the Emandisan HDF. The Combine’s home defense fleet, yes, Koscuisko’s brother Lo, the next youngest after Meeka, older than Nikosha by some years. It wasn’t impossible, of course, only one of Koscuisko’s brothers — Nikosha, the youngest — had been there when Stildyne had accompanied Koscuisko to Chelatring Side to meet with Koscuisko’s parents.

  No, of course not Koscuisko’s brother. Curran’s brother. Ise-I’let’s brother. Koscuisko wore Joslire Curran’s knives. That clearly made Koscuisko family, in some sense: reasonable enough, Stildyne decided. Totally unexpected, but reasonable.

  Koscuisko stood up, as though suddenly incapable of fully controlling his emotions. “I wish to be taken to the place as soon as possible,” Koscuisko said. “I have been waiting since I found out we were coming here. I will hope we can still meet. But I can’t wait. I need to go.”

  The mark captain nodded with grave and evident respect. “Of course, your Excellency, and it may yet be that Ise-I’let gets away from Brisinje before your ship leaves our station. In the mean time, First Officer — ”

  Mendez signaled his attention with politely raised eyebrows, and the mark captain continued.

  “In the mean time, we invite your ship to enjoy the hospitality of Emandis Station until that time comes, whenever it should be.”

  That meant more than it seemed to, Stildyne realized. Once the load was complete the Ragnarok would typically have a limited period of time to clear the system: the Bench wanted no conflict between Fleet and civilians. Here and now the mark captain was indicating that the Ragnarok was welcome to remain in Emandisan space, for a little while at least.

  It was as much as saying that the Ragnarok was to be offered the protection of the Emandisan home defense fleet. In light of the current tension between the Ragnarok and the rest of the Jurisdiction’s Fleet, that was a particularly interesting privilege to have extended. Was it really just because Koscuisko had Joslire’s knives, or was there something else going on?

  The Ragnarok would get its commissioning issue of arms and munitions at last; Koscuisko would have a chance to sit with Joslire’s people and mourn. If everything was actually to turn out to be as easy and as satisfying as that they would all be happy, the captain, the First Officer, the Ship’s Engineer, Koscuisko, everybody. If.

  But just in case the Emandisan didn’t intend Koscuisko’s knives to leave, Stildyne was going to be prepared to fight.

  ###

  Grunting a little — her side hurt where she’d been injured, and the ventilation shaft was by no means sized for a traveler — Jils pulled herself head-and-shoulders out of the primary ventilator access and into the air-well to shine her lantern up into the blackness of the shaft above.

  “Do you see anything?” Balkney asked, his hands around her ankles to anchor her and his voice muffled by the barrier of her own body in the vent-conduit. Jils scanned the sides of the air-well, playing the focused beam of the lantern from wall to wall of the naked rock shaft as far up the walls as the light would reach.

  “There’s a lot of rock.” Just beneath her, though, she could see rungs fixed in the wall. The floor didn’t look too far. She hoped that perspective did not deceive her; with only artificial light, the chances of confusing the eye with shades of gray were uncomfortably high. The rungs gave her a reference, though. They seemed to be about the same size in a flat two-dimensional comparison at the bottom of the air-well as within an arm’s-reach beneath her. “Let loose of me, Balkney, I’m going down.”

  She felt the lifting away of his grip on her ankles, and wriggled forward. Awkward. Balkney could do it, maybe Capercoy; any of the women. Padrake would never fit through here, though, he had altogether too much shoulder.

  Turning onto her back as she worked her way forward Jils took hold of the rung just above the access and pulled herself out, into the air-well. Balkney reached his hand out for the lantern as she began to climb down, leaning over the air-well from the vent-conduit shaft on his elbows to train the light on her route. Yes. Not very far down. If they had been on the surface the vent-access might have been the flat roof of a one-story building. Reaching the bottom Jils dusted her hands together, looking around.

  “I don’t see any other access,” Balkney said, from above. He’d angled himself over to one side to shine the lantern up along the wall that rose into the darkness above the shaft, rung after rung, into obscurity.

  Jils shuddered. She didn’t want to think of how far down they were.

  “What do you think?” He had the light. She was at the bottom of the air-well. He could back up into the shaft and lock the grill and l
eave her. She could try to climb out. Maybe if she did she’d fall. If she was lucky she’d fall from high enough to die on impact. That would be better than starving to death. There was no water here. What had she been thinking?

  “Catch,” Balkney said, and let the lantern drop. She had an emergency glim on her; he probably did as well. He might have stopped to let someone know where they were going, between his meeting with her in the kitchens after session and their rendezvous outside the generator station. If both of them disappeared someone might know where to look for them. She could hope. She hadn’t really thought this through, impelled to the experiment after hours spend brooding over how deep they were and how unhappy it made her to think that there was only one way out.

  Balkney was a sober married man, but he still climbed like a cat, jumping the last few feet to land sure-footed with his flexed knees more than equal to the force of the impact. He barely made a sound, when he landed. The air was still; sound didn’t carry. Why was the air still? Maybe she just didn’t feel its current. This was an air-well. There almost had to be some sort of an air current, whether passive or actively generated.

  “I think it’s a long way up,” Balkney said, staring up into the gloom with his normally sharp face practically knife-edged in his concentration. “It was a long way down. Seemed to be. Hard to judge from inside a car. I’d want protection if I was going to try to climb that ladder. Assuming it goes anywhere else than another vent-shaft, of course.”

  “If this is the one, the schematic seems to imply it goes all the way up.” There did have to be air-wells, almost necessarily. They were deep enough that the air would not refresh by normal exchange quickly enough to sustain human life where none had ever existed. A doorway into a lost world, and someone had put in an air-well? It was a guarantee of contamination. She hadn’t decided what the station’s founders might have been thinking, either, but she remembered why she’d wanted to get Balkney alone.