Halfling Moon Read online

  Quin chewed his lip, and wiped damp palms surreptitiously down his thighs. What was to prevent the wolf-ship from loosing their weapons on Runig's Rock, breaching it, killing . . .

  He ground his teeth, tried to bring his ragged breathing under control -- and felt a hand, firm and warm on his shoulder.

  "Pilot Natesa seems to be fully capable," Grandfather said, as calm and unhurried as if they were discussing whether or not to go for a walk. "And her reasoning is, by my reckoning, sound."

  Quin swallowed, inclined his head, recalled the pilot's explanation.

  "They have been brutal with the beacons, yes -- but the beacons are merely mechanicals -- barriers to their progress. This place -- is a treasure-house of many kinds. They will not wish to undermine it, nor to destroy that for which they search. Their first goal must be yourselves, for hostages have a high value. However, they must also be on the hunt for any small thing that may give them an advantage, or a grasp upon Korval."

  "Dragon by the tail," Padi had said, irrepressible even in this hour of danger.

  Pilot Natesa laughed.

  "Foolish, are they not?" she asked, seeming almost merry. "Yet they must be answered sternly, for their foolishness cannot be allowed to endanger us. Thus --"

  She had turned to Quin then, keys in hand and her eyes serious. Quickly, concisely, she had given him the board-codes and the key under which the pre-sets had been filed.

  He had his doubts. Especially he had his doubts about leaving Grandmother behind.

  She, however, had brooked no argument.

  "The pilot is wise, and I make no doubt, experienced," she said coolly. "I will remain, as I know the systems, and may provide back-up."

  "Grandmother --" he began, and stopped when she held up her hand, imperious.

  "I know my duty, as you know yours. Pilot."

  There was no answering her in this mode, Quin knew, yet to leave two -- one of them his Grandmother -- to face who knew what kind and number of savage crew? How would he answer his father for that?

  It was then that Pilot Natesa placed her neat hand upon his arm.

  "So soon as this small task is completed, Pilot Quin, we will be away, in the very ship of the Clan, so that the delm will have no cause to scold either of us for losing it," she said softly, her dusky face calm, and a smile in her dark eyes.

  Obviously, the pilot anticipated nothing more than a few moments' inconvenience. She was his superior, in rank and in age. And, as Grandmother had said, he knew his duty.

  "They're docked," Padi said, jolting him back to the here-and-now of his board. A moment later came Grandmother's confirmation, for his ear alone.

  "Our visitors are committed. On my count of six, Pilot yos'Phelium. One."

  Padi hit the in-ship.

  "Syl Vor, are you strapped in?"

  "I am!" he called back from the cabin he shared with the twins, who had already been made secure.

  "Stay that way until we sound all-clear."

  "All right," Syl Vor answered, amiable as always. "Do you think Mother will be at the port? And Uncle Shan?"

  "Remember, the pilot told us there was a great deal of busyness, boy-dear," Luken said, leaning forward and directing his voice toward the mic. "We shall see them, soon enough, though. No fears."

  "No fears, Grandfather," Syl Vor agreed.

  "Six," Grandmother said, calm and purposeful.

  Quin reached to the board, and Fortune's Reward dropped away from Runig's Rock.

  * * *

  "They're away," Pat Rin's lady mother said.

  "That is well," Natesa replied, leaning over the back of the chair. The dock light glowed a steady green in the screen; the hallway she had entered so short a time ago empty and bright.

  "Am I correct in assuming that the hallway may be filled with something other than plain air?"

  "You are," said Lady Kareen.

  "It would be simplest," Natesa said, "if they would fall at once. Do you watch here and when they are fairly into the hall, release your most potent, non-lethal mixture."

  The lady tipped her head, as if she might question this, as well she might; prisoners were always a risk, and yet --

  "The delm will wish to speak with them," Kareen yos'Phelium said, and inclined her head. "I shall do as you say, Pilot. And yourself?"

  "I?" Natesa shook her head. "I will assume that they are clever enough for suits, and shall be devising a secondary plan."

  The lady was seen, faintly, to smile.

  "Very good, Pilot," she said, and looked to her board.

  * * *

  The Jump point was coming up. Fortune's Reward was steady as she went. Screens in all directions clear, saving those to the rear, which showed Runig's Rock, sitting quiet in its little eddy of space, to all appearances inert.

  "Approaching Jump," Quin said, unnecessarily. He glanced to the rear screens again, hoping to see the second ship -- their ship -- tumbling away from dock.

  What he saw instead, in the instant before normal space blurred Jump-gray, was a jerk, as if the station had been hit by space junk, or --

  The warning chime sounded, and he brought his attention to the board.

  * * *

  They had been clever enough for suits, and not nearly as careful as she had hoped they would be.

  Natesa fell back as they entered the main hallway through the shattered door, weapons ready, spread out in a pattern that told her they knew their business well.

  She regretted, for a moment, Pat Rin's mother, then gave over regrets altogether.

  * * *

  The warning chime sounded, and Fortune's Reward was out into normal space.

  Crowded and unfamiliar normal space.

  Quin snatched at the controls, bringing weapons up, demanding answers from the navcomp.

  "Padi, grab the beacons, please," he said calmly, because he was too frightened to be anything but calm. "Then get the local feeds. We're off course."

  A moment's wrestling with the navcomp showed that they were off-course, though not as much as he had feared. More, the reason was perfectly obvious -- in fact, it surrounded them.

  Surebleak near-space wasn't merely crowded, it was crammed with ships. Scout ships, small traders, large yachts, and a great number of mid-sized craft, not meant for long-Jump, but well-enough for short trips.

  Padi fed him the beacon locations; he pulled the chart, located port and fed the numbers to the navcomp. That done, he began to calculate a course of his own, and winced when Padi brought audio up a little too strong.

  "Tree-and-Dragon," someone close said, and that was -- maybe that wasn't good.

  "Kill our ID," he told Padi, and saw the appropriate light at the top of the board go dark.

  He felt Grandfather shift behind him, as if in protest -- and then still. The pilot made those decisions for the ship, and Quin was the pilot.

  As it happened, he hadn't been quick enough.

  "Message from Tower, welcoming Fortune's Reward home," Padi said. "They request access, and promise a quick descent to the . . . the boss' own pad."

  "The . . . boss?" Quin said, memory stirring, but failing to fully wake.

  "That will be your father, boy-dear," Grandfather said from the jump-seat. "The Boss of Surebleak, Pilot Natesa styled him. You recall it."

  Now he did, at any rate.

  Cheeks warm, he addressed his co-pilot.

  "Please thank the Tower, and allow access."

  * * *

  Tower pulled their files, and routed them the promised fast drop to port, whereupon they busied themselves with shutdown, not to full sleep, but to twilight. That had been Grandfather's suggestion, and while it was undoubtedly a good one, Quin felt his stomach cramp with renewed worry.

  If Grandfather had second thoughts about Pilot Natesa's tale now . . .

  Shutdown complete, they gathered the twins and Syl Vor. By then, the hull was cool, but it seemed that none of them wanted to open the hatch.

  While they were st
anding in the piloting chamber, looking uneasily at each other, the comm pinged.

  Padi leapt for it, got the bud in her ear, listened, and stammered, "Yes, sir, at once," she licked her lips. "Pending pilot's approval."

  She turned to Quin. "Tower relays a message: The boss requests that we open the hatch."

  Quin stepped forward -- and stopped, his arm caught by Luken, who handed him Shindi.

  "I'll go first, boy-dear."

  Quin looked to Padi and gave her a nod. She fingered the sequence and the hatch came up.

  * * *

  Three men in pilot leather stood in the hatchway. The biggest man was Terran, Quin thought, and he stayed well to the rear, calling as little attention to himself as a big man might.

  The man nearest --

  It was Father, after all! Father wearing a pilot's jacket, with his hair in need of a trim, and his face chapped, as if he spent a lot of time out in the cold wind that blared through the open hatch.

  He embraced Grandfather, and Quin looked to the man who stood a little to the side. That man was . . . strangely difficult to see, as if he were somehow thinking himself invisible. Once one had him in eye, however, he was found to look like Grandmother; dark hair going to gray, and ironic black eyes.

  "Quin!"

  Padi snatched Shindi out of his arms and he was caught in a strong hug, cheek to cheek.

  "Quin. Child, I am all joy to see you!"

  Father stepped back. Quin sniffled and blinked, embarrassed to be found crying, but then he saw that he had no need, because Father was weeping, too.

  "Welcome," he said, "to your new home."

  He turned, then, holding his hands out to Padi and to Syl Vor.

  "Welcome. Your parents send their love, and their regret that duty keeps them so long away. Directly, we will go to Jelaza Kazone, as soon as --"

  He raised his head, looking beyond Syl Vor, as if expecting someone to emerge yet from the interior of the ship.

  Quin gulped, and stepped forward, his hand on Father's arm.

  "She's not here," he said, his voice wavering.

  Father looked back to him, his face suddenly still. Frighteningly still.

  "Is she not?" he murmured.

  "There were intruders," Grandfather said, turning from a low-voiced discussion with the pilot who so looked like Grandmother. "Truly, the pilot came to us in the very nick of time, boy-dear -- and stayed behind with your mother to deal with the problem. Neither would see wolves among the Clan's holdings, nor would they have us pursued."

  "Of course not," Father said, his voice cool and smooth. His gambling voice, Quin thought. He shook himself, then, and looked back, to where the big man tarried on the gantry.

  "Mr. McFarland," he said in Terran, "I shall be returning immediately to Runig's Rock. Pray you take my father, and our children under your care, and see them safe to the delm at Jelaza Kazone."

  "All right, sir. Daav sitting second?"

  "I wouldn't miss it for worlds," the pilot who looked like Grandmother said, his voice deep and rough.

  "I'm coming, too," someone said, as Grandfather and the rest sorted themselves without question, preparing to accompany Mr. McFarland.

  Quin blinked, recognizing his own voice -- and the rightness of his assertion.

  "Oh?" Father considered him, one eyebrow raised. "By what right?"

  Quin cleared his throat, and glanced at the elder pilot, who gave him an encouraging nod.

  "I left them there," he said. "Pilot Natesa and Grandmother."

  "You can scarcely argue the pilot's melant'i," the elder pilot said.

  "Can I not?" Father gave him a cold stare. The usual effect of such a stare was a glance aside and a bow of submission.

  The elder pilot laughed, then looked to Quin, black eyes glinting.

  "I have the honor to be your grandmother's brother. My name is Daav. You will address me, please, as Uncle Daav, as I don't feel able to support Grand-Uncle." He returned his attention to Father. "Pat Rin, do you go?"

  "At once."

  "Excellent. I engage to talk the Tower into giving us a quick lift while you, Pilot Pat Rin, look to your course. Pilot Quin, the jump-seat for you, sir; you've flown enough, and there are two here able to relieve you."

  Uncle Daav had an oddly decisive way about him, for someone who proposed to sit second, Quin thought, but he folded into the jump-seat with a certain amount of relief.

  He considered the screens as the pilots began their work, and so it was that he was the first to have eyes on the neat, and very familiar ship coming down near to hand.

  "They're here!" he cried, snapping upright. He pointed -- and then froze, looking to Father's face.

  "It may not be --"

  Uncle Daav touched the toggle and the general port babble filled the cabin.

  "Shadow Drake," came Pilot Natesa's soft, calm voice, riding a wave of argument over an extended wait time. "We are down and locked. Shutdown proceeds immediately."

  From the pilot's chair, a sound between a laugh and a cry.

  "Bother," said Uncle Daav, sweeping his hand down the board. "I had so been looking forward to a flight." He sighed, theatrically, reminding Quin of Cousin Shan. "Well, I suppose one must make the most of it. Shall we go over and display our manners, Pilot Pat Rin?"

  Father gave a long sigh, and reached out to trigger the final shutdown.

  "Indeed," he said, his voice not quite steady; "we should."

  * * *

  "It will require Housekeeping," Natesa told Pat Rin, after they had embraced and he had assured himself that she was well. "And -- I regret -- there was damage to the Clan's holding."

  "Damn the Clan's holding," Pat Rin said into her hair, and sighed.

  "Such terrible risks, Inas."

  "Nonsense," she answered. "And, you know, I would not have your mother think me faint-hearted, or unworthy of you."

  He laughed at that, which was well, and allowed her to step out of his embrace, though he retained a grip on her hand.

  Elsewhere in Shadow Drake's piloting chamber, Quin sat, palpably patient, and studying the board as if he had never seen one before. Daav yos'Phelium lounged against the back of the co-pilot's chair, to first glance completely at ease.

  Second glance, however, marked a certain tension in his shoulders and the cock of his hip, and the way his glance returned, time and again, to the door that led to the passenger's section.

  "Lady Kareen," Natesa began, and paused as the door flicked open, admitting the lady herself, none the worse for the wear, saving some singed hair and a neatly bandaged scrape along her arm.

  One step into the chamber, she paused, dark eyes on the tall shape in his lounge against the chair.

  "Kareen," he said, his voice quiet, his tone absolutely neutral.

  The lady took a breath deep into her lungs.

  Sighed it out.

  "Daav," she temperately, in the mode between kin. "Well met, brother."

  Moon on the Hills

  Surebleak

  Yulie had the frights pretty bad this time, bad enough that he'd waited, tucked down and froze-quiet in the rugged hatcher-nut grove in the hills well above the road, shaking, until long after the noisy threesome from somewhere down-road rushed to the clearest of the paths to the south in the face of impending darkness.

  What exactly his visitors had been doing he didn't know -- they'd called out hullo and whoha whoha a few times, like they didn't know if the place was empty -- and one of them called out "Captain Shaper" twice, and that made no sense since Grampa had been dead for so long Yulie could hardly remember his face sometimes without looking at the image files. Likely someone had the house-spot listed somewhere as a leasehold to the dead company, but heck, that was so far back it shouldn't matter to no one. They'd called his name once or twice too, he thought, but by then he'd been moving away and it might just as well have been a trick of the wind.

  "We need to talk with you!"

  Maybe those were the words he'd
heard, but even as he'd thought to come down, he hadn't -- there was dread in his way. He hadn't had any company since Melina Sherton had walked up some butter awhile back, being a good neighbor like she was, for all that she was a Boss. But he'd known her since he was a kid. Strangers -- no he wasn't much used to strangers around and it did make him worry.

  They'd probably been in the house if they wanted, since the door didn't lock beyond mild, and he could only hope that they hadn't searched too hard -- if he was lucky they'd left him the gun on the wall. Real luck was that they'd probably believed the ancient outhouse shoved against the outcrop was what it looked like.

  The whining of the overloaded buggy died down along with the temperature, and still he waited, hearing the regular sounds return as the mindlessness of fear receded. He wilted against a tree then, aware of the tiny movements in the leaves and drying field grass, of the wind's sigh, super aware of his vulnerability. The visitors all had guns, and he -- he'd left his hand gun back in the safe and the long gun locked into the rack. He hadn't carried them with him for quite some time.

  He knew better, he did, especially since some of the city folk thought they could come up and hunt anywhere that wasn't in the city. He didn't mind them shooting at rats or wild dogs or whatever someplace else, but here -- here they had no dogs, and the field creatures were few and far between mostly. The other potential targets -- well, Rollie'd explained it to the neighbors the year of the problem, and they'd posted signs, and it ought to be clear he preferred being left alone, him and the cats.

  And they hadn't looked to be intending assault…

  Not that he had reason to be assaulted, but they came from down the road, and Rollie'd gone down the road one day and never come back, dead from not knowing one boss from another, or from not having the sense not to antagonize a port city block-boy at a tollgate.

  The odd thing was that the road -- the road Rollie'd gone down, the road that grew to carry edibles for city folks, the road that ran all the way to port; that road, it started here. Here, on the property he called his, running right by the door of the cabin, right by the vegetable patch, right to the very cliffs that marked the first dig -- and Rollie, like always, was the one wanted to wander the other way. He'd looked over Worlds End enough that he wanted to get away from it, down the road with the lectracart in front of him, cart full of produce and him full of ideas.