Accepting the Lance Page 4

  “We move to stage two.”

  • • • • • • ✴ • • • • • •

  SUREBLEAK

  • • • • • • ✴ • • • • • •

  Jelaza Kazone

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  “Captain.”

  The voice was quietly urgent, utterly familiar.

  “Joyita?”

  Theo opened her eyes, blinking in confusion. This was not her cabin aboard Bechimo. This was—was…

  …her personal suite in her brother’s house on Surebleak. Right. She remembered now.

  She remembered all of it, now.

  “What’s amiss?” murmured Kara, who was sharing Theo’s pillow.

  “Hold,” Theo said to her; and, “Joyita, what news?”

  “Captain,” Joyita’s voice carried an unaccustomed edge of irritation. “Surebleak Portmaster requests your presence in her office immediately, regarding the drones we set in Surebleak orbit.” There was a short pause. “She did not sound happy.”

  Kara raised herself on an elbow and looked at Theo. Theo looked at Kara. Kara sighed.

  Well, they’d known it was possible that someone would figure it out—and would care. They hadn’t, to be fair, thought that anybody at Surebleak, which wasn’t precisely the tightest-run port in the universe, would have cared.

  “What time is it?” Theo asked. They’d landed opposite Surebleak time, and yesterday had been—well. And then there’d been the crew meet, which went late for celebrating Bechimo’s newly legal status as a Complex Logic, and they had landed off-time, so the party went on ’til pretty near local morning, and she’d still been dancing when she left for her rooms, and she’d asked Kara if she’d like to share pleasure, and she had—all of which meant that by the time they’d gotten to sleep the sky was showing dawn, and—

  “It is midmorning,” Bechimo said inside her head. “I did not think it necessary to wake you, but Joyita would have it.”

  Theo sighed. Not late then, and she was short on sleep. Not dangerously short on sleep, but…

  “Joyita’s right,” Theo said aloud. “The portmaster shouldn’t be kept waiting.”

  “Especially,” Kara added wryly, “when she is already unhappy with us.”

  “There’s that,” Theo agreed and tossed back the covers, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.

  “Joyita, please tell Surebleak Portmaster that I have received her message and will come to her with all possible speed.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Joyita, followed by a subtle click, as if he had closed a connection.

  “Jeeves?” Theo asked, grabbing the robe she’d flung onto the bottom of the bed only a couple hours before.

  A different voice—also male, very mellow, speaking Standard Terran, which nobody did, really, but it suited him.

  “Yes, Captain Waitley?”

  “Jeeves, please ask Tommy Lee if he’s available to drive me to the port, more or less immediately. I’ll need time to shower and dress.”

  “Certainly, Captain. He will be waiting for you at the front door in half an hour.”

  And, Theo thought, it was nice to know, definitively, how long immediately was, with regard to Surebleak’s portmaster.

  There was a rustle behind her; Theo turned to find Kara had pushed back her blankets and was on her feet.

  “Shall I come with you, as crew representative?” she asked. “The entire ship had agreed on—”

  Theo shook her head.

  “The portmaster will take it as given that the captain speaks for the ship,” she said. “You might as well go back to bed.” She produced a lopsided grin. “One of us ought to get some sleep.”

  “Hah,” said Kara, tipping her head. “Perhaps I will update the executive officer.”

  Theo looked at her with interest.

  “Do you have a particular reason to want Clarence mad at you?”

  “Not particularly, no,” Kara said. “I will wait for you here, if it pleases?”

  “It pleases,” Theo told her. “I should be back soon. How long can it take to pay a fine, after all?”

  • • • ✴ • • •

  “Good morning, Tommy,” Theo said, sliding into the back seat of the town car.

  “Morning, Captain,” he answered easily. He looked perfectly cheerful and wide awake, lucky man.

  “I’ll have you to the port in no time at all. You just take a quick zip-nap back here and leave the piloting to me.”

  Which wasn’t, Theo admitted, a bad idea at all.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No worries,” he answered, shutting the door and going around to the driver’s seat.

  Theo dropped her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes. Breathing deeply, she accessed a pilot’s board drill—meant to impart the benefits of a good solid two hours of sleep in one intense fifteen-minute exercise—and was deep into the trance before the car had passed through the front gate.

  * * *

  Theo woke on a deep breath and did a quick scan. She felt rested and relaxed, alert and ready to talk with the portmaster. There’d be a fine, naturally enough. It was the least that the port could do—well, it was really the only thing the port could do. Littering the lanes was a definite violation, even though the little surprises they’d dropped strategically at probable entry points for Chandra Marudas had been too small to damage a ship, and rigged to disintegrate within twenty-four hours of release. They’d been meant to embarrass Captain yos’Thadi, and that they had done—loudly.

  No less than what he’d deserved, Theo had thought, her ship and crew in agreement. Not only had the good Scout captain been maliciously pursuing her ship and a crewman, he’d taken leave to insult Bechimo’s abilities.

  Yeah, he’d deserved to be publicly embarrassed.

  Worse than that, he’d come to Surebleak confident that the field judgment requested of Scout Commander Val Con yos’Phelium, coincidentally Theo’s brother Val Con, would put Bechimo into his hands for deprogramming and destruction.

  Well, Captain yos’Thadi had gone away unsatisfied, while Val Con’s field judgment had the potential to change…nearly everything, and the drones they’d dropped had disintegrated hours ago, having done no more harm than they were intended to do.

  Or maybe not.

  Theo opened her eyes, frowning.

  Had they somehow unwittingly damaged a ship? The drones were so small, so fragile that, had a ship encountered one, it would have seemed like nothing more worrisome than a patch of dust. Joyita had said that the portmaster sounded peeved, and come to think of it, if it was only a matter of paying a fine, the port should’ve billed the ship. There wasn’t any need for the portmaster to get involved.

  “Theo.”

  Bechimo spoke to her in bond-space, sounding perfectly calm.

  “Your blood pressure is rising,” he continued. “I can assure you that the drones each disintegrated according to the presets. There were no collisions; no ships were harmed. Of course, I monitored them.”

  Of course he had. Bechimo wouldn’t leave such a thing to chance. Theo took a breath.

  “Sorry,” she said in bond-space. “Just borrowing trouble.”

  “Indeed,” Bechimo said. “Not that there isn’t some cause for concern. You are correct that, if it were only a fine, you would not be called to speak with the portmaster in person. Portmasters, even on such a port as Surebleak, are busy with higher matters. The collection of fines is best left to flunkies—or to automatics.”

  “So, she wants to read me a lecture,” Theo said. “Or—wait! Maybe she got Val Con’s judgment, and she wants to talk to the captain of a Complex Logic—the Complex Logic, the one who triggered the need for a field judgment.”

  Bechimo was silent for a long moment.

  Theo stirred.

  “Do you think she’s working with Captain yos’Thadi?” she asked, her hand already moving toward the intercom, to tell Tommy
to turn the car around.

  “No,” Bechimo said, and she paused. “I do not think so. Joyita has been doing research.”

  Of course Joyita had been doing research, Theo thought. There was nothing Joyita liked better than to pry into other people’s secrets. He routinely violated privacy codes and security gates, and unfortunately, the information he mined was almost always useful.

  “What did he find out?” she asked.

  “That Portmaster Liu has been an exemplary master of an unruly and unprofitable port. Joyita expresses some curiosity about why she was assigned here. He is undertaking further research on that line.”

  Theo considered that.

  “As long as he doesn’t open anything he shouldn’t,” she said.

  “I am certain he will be discreet,” Bechimo answered, which wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.

  She bit her lip.

  “Unless it’s the field judgment, there’s no reason for her to see me. And Joyita said she sounded irritated. If she’s—”

  “Time to wake up, Captain,” Tommy’s voice came over the intercom. “Arrival at the portmaster’s office in three minutes.”

  Surebleak Port

  Portmaster’s Office

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Captain Waitley wasn’t quite what Portmaster Liu had been expecting.

  No, scratch that. In a lot of ways, Captain Waitley was exactly what Portmaster Liu had been expecting: short for a Terran, tall for a Liaden, lean for the height she did have; shoulders showing attitude under a Jump jacket older and bigger than she was. Whatever else she was—and recklessly negligent wasn’t off the table, in Portmaster Liu’s not exactly objective opinion—Theo Waitley was definitely a member of Boss Conrad’s extended family, Clan Korval. Portmaster Liu had been spending a lot of time lately with the Boss and the Boss’s little brother, the Road Boss; she knew the family look when she saw it.

  What did surprise her was the wild scramble of wispy fair hair, the pale skin, and the obvious frown. Captain Waitley was ticked off, which was fair enough. What was interesting, though, was how plain she let that bad temper show.

  On several occasions over the course of their profitable, if not entirely placid, relationship, Boss Conrad had reason to be annoyed with Portmaster Liu, which she’d never known from his face. Crisp overpoliteness was the first clue, followed by frozen good manners and a toxic increase in irony levels, if whatever was making him peevish didn’t subside straight off.

  Well, and maybe Captain Waitley had found that a frank and open display of temper got her the results she wanted. It probably took a fair amount of practice to perfect Boss Conrad’s style…

  “Portmaster Liu, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” the captain said—well, snapped. “You wanted to talk with me about the drones we dropped off?”

  Liu blinked.

  Got right down to the business at hand, did Captain Waitley, without even so much as an inquiry into the portmaster’s general health and the state of the port. Nothing rude about it—a classic Terran approach really. Some of the kids attached to Conrad’s family were taking up the Terran mode, from what she’d seen and heard, so—fair enough, again.

  “I appreciate you coming so quick,” she answered. “Good timing, as it happens. There’s a survey team on-port, and they’ll be wanting my attention pretty soon. So we’ll need to settle our business fairly smart.”

  Captain Waitley nodded briskly. “I won’t waste your time. I’ve come to pay my fine.”

  Well, now—the fine. On the one hand, it was good that she knew she’d be having to pay a fine and wasn’t making the smallest suggestion that it could be lost, friendly-like, in the paperwork.

  You’d think, though, given a captain with a reputation of a certain kind, attached to a family that valued their ships more than the lives of their children…you’d think that captain’d consider the fine—hefty as it was—the least of her problems.

  Which maybe meant that Captain Waitley hadn’t quite reasoned her way into a full set of understandings.

  Well, Portmaster Liu thought, consciously bringing herself taller in the chair; this’ll be fun.

  “Have a seat, Captain,” she said, nodding at the smaller chair by the side of her desk.

  Captain Waitley’s frown got frownier, but she sat down, civilized enough, and as a seeming afterthought, folded her hands on her knee.

  “The fine, now,” the portmaster said, forcing herself to talk easy in the face of that visible increase in bad temper. “You’ll take care of that with the bursar. I’ll point you in his direction after we get done talking about the citation.”

  Space-black eyes blinked.

  “Citation?” she repeated, real quiet.

  Right, thought the portmaster. This was the street Captain Waitley was willing to die on. Money was only money. Well, Portmaster Liu could agree on that point, most times, but a citation, now—that was an assault against honor and, the little gods of nuts ’n bolts save her, she might’ve just let it go with a stern talking-to, rather than fight that fight with one of Conrad’s own, but…

  “Citation?” Captain Waitley said again, even quieter.

  “That’s right,” Portmaster Liu said, giving the thing weight with a brisk nod. “We’re laying a grava citaĵo—a major citation—for violation of spaceway protocol against your personal license for one Standard Year, and a six-monther against your ship.”

  “That’s…steep,” Captain Waitley observed, which as a response was a lot milder than the portmaster had braced herself for, considering that it was going to be damned ’spensive in terms of hazard fees and dangerous-docking levies. Smalltrader was gonna feel that.

  “It is,” she agreed. “And I’m sorry to say that I can’t let either one slide off the table.”

  Another blink, the frown fading into thoughtfulness.

  “Aren’t you the portmaster?”

  Quick on the pickup—well, that was the family, too, grandpa to babe in arms.

  “That’s right,” she said equitably. “I’m the portmaster.”

  “Well, then, what prevents you, if you can’t?” the captain asked, which was a reasonable enough question. “I admit that we—theoretically—imperiled traffic. I have no quarrel with being fined. The drone didn’t cause an accident; it’s gone by now, and even if it had collided with a ship, the most they would have thought was they’d caught a patch of dust. Still—you’re the portmaster and I was out of line. We agree.”

  She took a deep breath, visibly settling into being calm, and Portmaster Liu took a similar breath in solidarity.

  “Typical offenses that merit a grava citaĵo are: law-breaking, port-breaking, child-stealing, illegal dealings, piloting to endanger—”

  Girl knew her regs, plain enough. Portmaster Liu held up a hand, palm out.

  “You’re right. I’m calling down a blizzard where a squall would do, like they say out in the city. Between us, if you’d dropped your little party favor in my shipping lanes on any other day, I’d’ve fined you, dressed you down like you’d never worn clothes before, and we’d’ve parted on good terms.

  “But you happened to pull this stupid stunt at the exact same time we got a TerraTrade survey team on-port, trying their best to figure out how to hold back that upgrade you might’ve heard Boss Conrad is so set on us getting.”

  That got her another frown, and a speculative look.

  “You’re saying that you not only have to go by the book, you’ve got to go by the strictest reading possible, or the survey team will find cause to withhold,” Captain Waitley said with a slight nod. “I see that; I don’t have a problem with the fine. I won’t like it, but knowing the reasons, I’ll even swallow the six-monther against the ship, but—”

  Portmaster Liu held up her hand again and glanced at the clock on the wall.

  “There’s another factor you’re not taking into account, Captain. This is gonna sound brusque, but take it for the tr
uth. The reason the survey team is looking so hard for reasons to deny this port its upgrade is because of what happened at Solcintra. At least one member of the team has it as his stated opinion that Clan Korval is outright pirates and all Surebleak Port deserves is a Do Not Stop until such time as you and yours leaves the planet.”

  She paused, and tipped her head slightly. “Pardon?” she asked politely.

  Captain Waitley shook her head. “Nothing; sorry. Why are they even bothering to survey if that’s their opinion?”

  “It’s only one opinion out of a possible three. The other members of the team state that they’ve brought no preconceptions to the survey. Which might be so, but even if it is so, it doesn’t necessarily mean that TerraTrade thinks the same. In which case, they’ve got the team doing the survey so’s to have the record full and proper and no questions this time. Nor any appeals.”

  Captain Waitley’s frown was back; she fluttered her fingers, pilot-sign for go on.

  “Right. So, what I have to make plain as the snow in front of your nose is that the portmaster’s office doesn’t put up with any kind or size of shenanigans, and that we’re particularly keeping a very close eye on the members of Clan Korval. Any of ’em step outta line, and they get slapped, fast and hard.”

  She took a hard breath, aware that she’d been getting a little emphatic, and finished it off quiet. “On account of this is Surebleak Port, not Port Korval—nowhere even close.”

  There was a little bit of silence, which she didn’t interrupt, despite the time.

  “I’m not a member of Clan Korval,” Captain Waitley said eventually. “I’m a citizen of Delgado.”

  Right or wrong, Portmaster Liu couldn’t help but feel some sympathy. The captain was doing a good enough job of holding on to her temper and working through the possibles, as clean and crisp as if the whole of it was a problem out of Ethics Class. Unfortunately…

  “That might work as a dodge on some other day, Captain,” she said kindly, “but I’m betting the survey team’s not ignorant of the fact that you’re the Road Boss’s sister. You being a Terran and a citizen of Delgado—all that’s aside. You’re family, even if you aren’t clan.”