Part 20 (1/2)
Plan B: Korval was in grave danger. He drew a breath and felt Aelliana stir, take note, and finally murmur in his ear: ”Whatever has happened? Surely the Juntavas have not caused this?”
The inters.h.i.+p chatter had been tense with other rumors; civil wars, Yxtrang invasions, missing s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps, Juntavas walking openly in midports in daylight.
Daav had debated destinations. Lytaxin-world of a solid ally. Liad itself was surely to be avoided with Plan B in effect!
He sat to board, finally, and having thought Lytaxin, his fingers unhesitatingly tapped in another code. This was a destination only for scouts and the adventuresome curious; there was no trade there, nor ever had been. Well.
”Well,” Aelliana affirmed, and he gave the s.h.i.+p its office.
Now, with an hour yet to Jump-end, Daav hesitated before switching his call signals. No need to give away all his secrets, even to Scouts. He set the timer and moved back to begin his exercises. Ride the Luck would call him before they arrived at Nev'Lorn.
SHADIA REACHED TO the canister overhead, pulling the red k.n.o.b that was both handle and face mask. Obligingly the canister gave up its package, the plate descending to shoulder height. Grasping the disk carefully she twisted the red handle. It turned properly in her hand and the initial three minutes of air began flowing from the mask as the Cloak began taking shape. She pushed it toward the floor, stepped into the tube, and as it inflated by her head, she grabbed the blue handle and pulled. That closed the Cloak over her head and with a twist of vapor from the heat seal she was now inside the new Cloak while wearing the old.
Now she reached for the blade on her belt and carefully pierced the diminished Cloak, and writhing awkwardly, stepped out of it, perhaps spicing her language a bit to help, and then a bit more as the old Cloak tangled on her ankle and left her sitting in mid-air. With exasperation she used a few more choice words, asked a couple of pungent questions of the universe at large and cut a bit more with the knife. In another moment, the old Cloak was a mere wrinkle of plastic and a disk, which she handed it through the pockets of the new Cloak with relief.
She stuffed it into the waste bin, which was filling rapidly, and surveyed the work area, realizing as she did that she hardly registered the more minor sounds of the s.p.a.ce dust on the hull.
Over in the corner, Clonak ter'Meulen, supervisor of Pilots, was tampering with a scout issue s.p.a.cesuit, breaking thereby a truly impressive number of regulations. He had replaced his Cloak nearly a standard hour before and now sat immersed in carefully deconstructing the suit, with an eye toward keeping the electronics intact.
More or less conversationally-the atmosphere in the s.h.i.+p having gotten up to near 20 per cent of normal-he bellowed inside his Cloak.
”Shadia, I hadn't realized you'd spent so much time around Low Port...”She almost laughed and did manage to snort.
”Doubtless, I hurt your ears...”
”Well, at least you've hurt my feelings.”
She looked at him quizzically.
Clonak glanced away from his work, moving his hand inside the Cloak to pull out a bit of paper towel and mop his brow before continuing.
”I clearly heard you ask whose, ahhh.... whose idea the Cloaks were. Very nearly they are mine!”
Shadia blinked.
”Are you Momson, then?”
”Me, Momson? Not a bit of that, at all.” Clonak continued, still busily taking the suit apart. ”Momson is some legendary Terran inventor, I gather. No, but the Cloaks-they've only been on Scout s.h.i.+ps for about 25 years. But then, I guess you could blame Daav yos'Phelium, too, for having the bad judgement to need a Cloak when he didn't have one...”
”But I thought the nameplate says that some Terran foundation gave us the money to start installation....”
”Right you are. The Richard A. Davis Portmaster Aid Foundation. But I'm afraid that's my fault. They have a wonderful archive-at least equal to the open Scout collections-and I was looking for quick solutions. Headquarters was already moving me into this pilot support track I've ended up in, you see, and dea'Cort himself set me on them.”
”When it turned out that we didn't need anything all that esoteric, really, the research librarian was pleased to hand me over to the so-called Implementation Office and they had me walking around in one of these things inside a day. I brought a dozen dozen back for testing and barely a relumma after I had posted off my thank-you note, Headquarters sent me off on a secret mission-to pick up a s.h.i.+pload of these things, complete with dispenser canisters.”
”Secret mission?” Shadia snorted. ”They didn't want other Scouts to know you were getting all the plush flights?”
Clonak chuckled briefly at his work.
”Actually, it was far more sinister than that. There's always a faction in the Council of Clans that wants to shut funding for the Scouts off, or reduce it. Some of them don't want us doing anything that might benefit Terrans, or they want us to charge for our work, or be turned into pet courier pilots for the High Houses.
The idea that we might somehow be in debt to a Terran foundation had to be kept super mum,”
Shadia heard the crinkle of the Momson Cloak about her as she shook her head Terran-style and then flipped the hand signal roughly translating as ”stupidly a.s.sessing the situation, them, as dogs might.”
One-handed Clonak replied with ”Affirm that twice.”
Before Shadia could turn back to her work Clonak stretched himself, permitting his legs to float higher than his head, and held up a series of electronic modules linked by tiny flat cables. At the end of the cables were several tiny power units.
”Shadia, what you see here is the work of a genius.””Of course,” she said politely.
Clonak ignored her. ”It's too bad that I nearly destroyed it getting It out of the suit. I can see several more modifications I'll need to make, and then a box-lot of paperwork once we are joyfully returned to Headquarters....”
Shadia sighed. ”What is it?”
”A working transceiver set, of course! What else could it be? Now all we need to do is decide what we might safely say, on what frequency, and how often, for the right people to hear and fetch us away from this lovely idyll of shared pleasure.” He moved a shoulder and his feet sank deckward. ”I believe we will need your location report by the end of the s.h.i.+ft, and since I'm essentially done with this I'm available to act as your clerk.”
RIDE THE LUCK broke into normal s.p.a.ce and reported that all was well. Three breaths after, the position report center screen was replaced by a tile of alarms and warnings as the meteor s.h.i.+elds went up a notch and the Scout's private hailing frequency was crowded by messages and fragments: ”... and Jumped out before I could cross-hair him; he definitely took out dea'Ladd!”
”... was destroyed. Have adequate munitions to continue search pattern...”
Daav's hands touched the switches which armed Ride the Luck, brought the scans online...
”... have returned fire and am hit. Breath's duty-notify my clan of our enemy-I have three hours of air, heavy pursuit and no Jump left. Tell Grenada I forgive the counterchance debts. Notify my clan of Balance due these...”
Scans showed debris in orbits that should have been clean, and warnaways at Nev'Lorn itself.
Into a battle had come Ride the Luck, Tree-and-Dragon broadcasting on all ID ports. No way to tell immediately how old some of the incoming messages might be- Daav thumbed a switch. ”Daav yos'Phelium, Scout Reserve Captain, co-pilot of packet boat Ride the Luck, requesting berthing information or a.s.signment. Repeat...”
Before he was finished the second iteration he heard a cry of ”Korval!” over the open line, and, fainter, ”The Caylon's s.h.i.+p!”
The chatter built and by then Ride the Luck had cataloged a dozen objects of note, including two closing tangentially.
On commercial frequency-responding to the ID no doubt-came: ”Freighter Luck, you are to stand by for boarding by the Department of the Interior; you are under our weapons! Repeat-”
On the Scout frequency: ”Luck, Courier 12 here, I have you on my scans. I'm at breath's duty, pilot! I have one salvo left before I'm gone, Get away and tell clan Kia the name of their enemy...”
Kia was a Korval trading partner.
Ride the Luck's ranging computer showed the two potential targets and attendant radio frequencies;Daav touched the guidestick and clicked the red circle over one of them. The circle faded to yellow.
Still nothing from Nev'Lorn base.
”Give me my commission, dammit! Are you asleep!” Daav's finger danced over the board: now he had the s.h.i.+p that had broadcast the duty message identified, and the one that had ordered him to stand by for boarding.