Star Song and Other Stories Part 27

"I wouldn't dream of insulting you that way again," she a.s.sured me, her voice not quite covering up the soft click as she s.h.i.+fted her gun to its three-needle setting. "So let's make it simple. You call Hobson, and Blankens.h.i.+p gets to live."

I felt my throat tighten. "You wouldn't dare."

"I've already said I don't need either her or Ms. Enderly," Chen reminded me. "In a pinch, I could probably do without the king, too."

I took a deep breath, exhaled it noisily, and got to my feet. "Don't do it, Jake," Rhonda pleaded. "She's bluffing-even the Chen-Mellis family couldn't get her off a murder charge."

"The Chen-Mellis family can do anything when the rewards are big enough,"

Chen said shortly.

"It's not worth the risk," I told Rhonda, reaching down to briefly squeeze her hand. "Besides, even if I don't, Bilko will be here eventually anyway."

The throne was more comfortable than it looked, with silky-soft cus.h.i.+ons fitted to the stone. The controls on the left armrest were simple and straightforward: one basic on/off switch, one that determined whether or not the audio was accompanied by a visual, and five switches determining which section or sections of the colony would receive the broadcast. I set the latter group for full coverage, set the mode for audio only-this at Chen's insistence-and we were ready. "No tricks," she warned, stepping back well out of range of any desperate flying leaps I might have been contemplating. "Bear in mind this gun has a clip of just over two hundred fifty needles, and that I don't mind spending a few of them if I have to."

I cleared my throat and touched the "on" switch. "Attention; attention," I called. "First Officer Will Hobson of the Sergei Rock, this is your captain speaking. We're having a little party over here at the Palace you seem to have forgotten about. Greet the other cardsharps for me and hustle it over here, all right? Thank you; that is all."

I switched off the PA and stepped down from the throne. "Happy?" I asked Chen sourly.

"What was that nonsense about a party and cardsharps?" she demanded, her face dark with suspicion.

"It's a private joke," I said briefly, striding past her and dropping onto the couch next to Rhonda.

"Make it a public joke," Chen ordered.

I could feel Rhonda's eyes on me, and could only hope she wasn't frowning too hard at this private joke she'd never heard of. "It goes back to a time on Bandolera when I got him into some trouble," I said. "I called him while he was in the middle of a game and told him to get back to the transport. He was winning big, and said he wouldn't be back until he'd finished the round. He turned off his phone; so I tracked down the numbers of the other players and started calling them and telling them to please send Bilko home."

"I imagine he was immensely pleased by that," Chen said.

"I don't think he ever lived it down," I said. "At least, not with that bunch.

The point is the reference means he's to get his rear over here now, and not just whenever he finishes the current round or has won enough money or whenever."

Chen lifted the gun warningly. "He'd better."

"He will," I sighed, mentally crossing my fingers a little harder.

Peter cleared his throat. "I'm curious, Miss Chen," he said. "When you spoke earlier of changing the shape of Expansion s.p.a.ce travel with our enginedesign, I naturally a.s.sumed a certain degree of exaggeration. Now that we know your true affiliation, do I now a.s.sume you were speaking literally?"

"Quite literally, Your Highness," Chen told him. "In ten years, the Chen-Mellis family is going to completely dominate intrasystem s.p.a.ce travel. We're going to create super tankers, mining s.h.i.+ps like no one's seen since the Jovian Habitats went down, pa.s.senger liners ten times bigger than the Swan of Tuonela-"

"And wars.h.i.+ps?" Rhonda asked quietly.

Chen didn't even flinch. "Of course we're going to need to defend our interests," she said. "I don't antic.i.p.ate any actual warfare, though."

"Of course not," I said sarcastically. "Subtle threats and economic pressure bring the same results without making so much of a mess, don't they?"

Chen shrugged. "You learn slow, Smith. But you do learn."

"Possibly faster than you do," I said. "Has it occurred to you that there may be a limit to how big a s.h.i.+p the flapblacks are going to be able to carry?"

"Of course it has," she said. "That's another reason why I want to try to bring the colony back with me. If they can carry the Freedom's Peace, then the sky is very literally the limit."

From across the room came the whisper of air that signaled the opening of the double doors. Chen spun around to face that direction, dropping her arm to her side to conceal the gun against the back of her right thigh. I felt my muscles tense, reflexively estimating the distance to her gun and the chances I could get there before she could aim and fire...

Obviously not as subtly as I'd thought. "Don't, Jake," Rhonda hissed into my ear, gripping my arm. "It's still set on three-needle."

"h.e.l.lo, everyone," Bilko said, wandering almost casually into the room.

Wandering in alone; and even as I tried to catch a glimpse of anyone else who might be out in the foyer the doors swung shut again. "Sorry to be late, Jake-my game went a little longer than I'd expecte-"

He broke off as his eyes landed on the gun Chen had brought back into view again. "Relax, Hobson, it's not what it seems," she a.s.sured him. "My name is Andrula Chen; second cousin of the Chen-Mellis family, with the mission of bringing this colony back to the Expansion. Unfortunately, the power structure here is resisting me, and I'm going to need your a.s.sistance."

"Well... sure," he said, throwing a puzzled look at the rest of us on the couch.

"Jake?"

"Captain Smith wanted more than his a.s.sistance was worth," Chen said. "He demanded ten million neumarks; I could only offer five."

She looked at me as if daring me to contradict her. But though her eyes were on me, her gun was pointed at Rhonda. I held her gaze, and kept my mouth shut.

Bilko snorted derisively. "Five million neumarks not good enough, huh? Well, that's management for you. OK, Ms. Chen, you've got yourself a deal. What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to plot us a course from here back to Angorki," she said. "Can you do it?""Sure-no sweat," he said, glancing around and starting toward the desk. "I just need a computer-there must be one back here somewhere."

And across at Peter's end of the couch, Suzenne suddenly inhaled sharply.

Chen heard her, too. "Just a minute," she snapped, throwing a suspicious glare at Suzenne. "What was that all about?"

Suzenne seemed to shrink back into the cus.h.i.+ons. "What was what?"

"What's over there at the desk?" Chen demanded.

"Nothing," Suzenne said guardedly. "What could be there?"

"Yeah, what could be there?" Bilko agreed, taking another step toward the desk.

"Computer's probably in one of these drawers, right?"

"Get away from there," Chen said sharply, spinning back to face him. "I said get away."

"Sure, OK," Bilko said, taking a hasty step back and holding up both hands.

"What's the problem?"

"Maybe you're a little too cooperative." Chen threw me a hard look. "And maybe there was more to Smith's private joke than he let on. Move away-I'll find the computer."

"Whatever you say," Bilko shrugged, taking another step back. Chen circled around behind the desk, clearly trying to watch all of us at once. She pulled the desk chair out and half stooped to pull open one of the drawers- The thick gla.s.s panels were so perfectly transparent and moved so fast that they were almost impossible to see. But there was no missing the sudden thundercrack as they slammed out of disguised cracks in the floor and thudded solidly against the ceiling, sealing the desk and the area around it into its own isolated s.p.a.ce.

Chen's curse-I a.s.sume she cursed-was lost in the echo of that boom, as was the sound of her shot. She ducked reflexively back as the needles ricocheted from the barrier; and then the guard who'd come through the doorway that had magically appeared in the wall behind the desk was on her, the momentum of his diving tackle slamming her hard against the gla.s.s. By the time the second and third guards made it through the door, she had run out of fight.

"Don't hurt her," Peter called. We were all on our feet now, though I personally couldn't recall having stood up. "Take her to a holding cell."

"Make sure you search her first," Suzenne added. "Thoroughly."

They hustled her out through the hidden door, and Peter turned back to me.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "However you did it, we're in your debt."

"No problem," Bilko a.s.sured him, coming up to join us. "When Jake says to whistle up the cops, I whistle up the cops." He looked back toward the desk, watching as the gla.s.s panels receded back into the floor. "Now that it's over, can someone tell me what I just blew five million neumarks over?"

"The biggest attempted hijacking in history," I said, looking at Peter. "And unfortunately, it's not over yet."

"You really think her people will be coming to look for her?" Suzenne asked.

"It's worse than that," I said grimly. "The implication she's out here alone is nonsense-no Chen-Mellis second cousin would be stupid or reckless enough to come out here without backup already on its way. My guess is we've got maybe two or three days before they get here. Maybe less."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Bilko cut in. "If they're that close, why didn't she just wait for them in the first place? Why bother coming in with us?"

"Because there are other people looking for the Freedom's Peace," I told him.

"And the first one to get here is going to be the one with salvage rights claim.

Odds are that those loudspeakers she scattered around the colony really are also recorders, just like she said, so that she'll have a record of her presence here."

"But then why didn't she wait for her people to arrive before revealing herself to us?" Peter asked, clearly confused. "Why risk tipping us off the way she did?"

"Pure arrogance," Rhonda suggested. "She wanted to deliver you personally to the backup team."

"Or else she wanted to be the one who got the flapblacks to get you moving,"

Bilko put in. "Maybe there's even some rivalry between her and the backup team-the Ten Families are supposed to be riddled with upper-level infighting.

If she got the Freedom's Peace back to Angorki on her own, she'd look that much better."

"The reasons and motivations don't matter," I interrupted the budding debate.

"The bottom line is that we've got trouble on the way."

"I can't allow my people to be forced into servitude, Captain," Peter said softly, the lines in his face deepening. "If it comes to that choice, we will fight."

"Let's see if we can't find a third choice," I said. "Tell me about those flapblacks that surround the colony, the ones who chase away the others. What are they, predators of some kind?"

Peter smiled sadly. "Hardly. They're merely the eldest of the Star Spirits.

The ones marking their last few weeks as they wait for death."

An unpleasant s.h.i.+ver ran up my back. I knew all creatures died, of course, and in fact we'd had that argument on the way in over whether our wrapping flapblacks were getting eaten. But somehow the thought of a group of aging flapblacks hovering together waiting quietly to die was more disturbing than I.

would have expected it to be. Perhaps it took some of the magic away, or perhaps it felt too much like the death of a favorite pet.

"Like all Star Spirits, they enjoy music," Peter continued quietly. "But of a particular kind, the kind only we apparently know how to write for them.

That's what the music in the colony is for."

Abruptly, Suzenne looked at me and smiled. "One of them remembers you, Captain.

He says he carried you once a long time ago."

A second chill ran through me. "They get into our minds?" I asked carefully.

"Not just the musicmaster's, I mean, but all the rest of us, too?"

"No, they can't read minds, Captain," Peter a.s.sured me. "Not even ours, and we're as attuned to them as any humans have ever been. No, they simply recognize you by the shape of your minds, just as you recognize them by the spectra of their pa.s.sing.""I see," I murmured. Like a favorite pet, I'd just thought. Only which of us was the pet? "So why do they drive the other flapblacks away?"

"They don't," Suzenne said. "The others stay away out of respect for the dying."

I scratched my cheek. Bits and pieces of a nebulous plan were starting to swirl together in my brain. "Does that mean that if you asked them to move aside for awhile and let the younger ones in, they would do it?"

Peter shook his head. "I know what you're thinking, my friend. But it won't work."

"Well, I don't know what he's thinking," Jimmy spoke up.

"It's simple, Jimmy," I told him. "Cousin Chen went to a lot of trouble to scatter all those loudspeakers around the colony. I think it would be a shame to waste all that effort."

"But it won't work," Peter repeated. "We've talked with the Star Spirits about this. They simply aren't strong enough to carry the Freedom's Peace."

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. You say you've talked to them; but you didn't say you've played music for them."

"Are you suggesting we force them to carry us?" Suzenne demanded, an ominous glint in her eye.

"It's not a matter of forcing," I said. "They enjoy the music-you know that as well as we do. I think it acts like a stimulant to them."

"So now you're suggesting we effectively drug them-"

"Excuse me," Rhonda put in gently. "Your Highness, how long have you been providing music for the dying flapblacks to listen to?"

"Quite a few years," Peter said, frowning. "All of my lifetime, certainly."

"And how often during those years have you had a younger flapblack carry any of you anywhere?"

He shrugged. "Three or four times, perhaps. But those were only our small scout s.h.i.+ps. Not nearly as big even as your transport."

"Then perhaps that's the real problem," Rhonda said. "You can talk to the flapblacks, but your perception of them has been skewed by the fact that most of the time you're talking to the old and dying, not the young and healthy."

"You talked about whale and dolphins earlier," I put in. "I suggest a better a.n.a.logy might be dogs."

"Dogs?" Peter asked.