Michael Flynn - In the Lion’s Mouth

Donovan turned control over to the Sleuth, who went to their knees for a closer study of the jamb.

The Pedant recognized the locking mechanism from his databank. A Yarbor and Chang lock. This ship is Peripheral-built.

“Probably hijacked by our gracious hostess,” muttered the Fudir.

Which means this room was not designed as a prison cell, said the girl in the chiton, whom Donovan liked to call “Pollyanna.”

So. Retrofitted ad hoc, said the Sleuth, and likely in haste. Yarbor and Chang … so what?

Its central processor has a design flaw. A notice went out from their corporate headquarters on Gladiola two metric years ago. I remember reading it.

You remember everything, the Sleuth complained. He took the scarred man’s right arm and pointed. Pedant’s design flaw indicates that an electrical current passed across these two points—here, and here—will set up a magnetic field within the processor that resets the lock to zero.

“That’s nice,” said the Fudir. “So if we had a generator in our pocket, or a battery, and some wires, and could maybe do a bit of soldering, if we had a soldering gun—and some solder—there’s a chance we could get out of this room.”

“At which point,” said Donovan, “we would find ourselves in a ship. A bigger cell, is all.”

Hey. At least we’d have room to stretch.

“And where would we find wiring?”

And it’s not pitch dark in here.

He means there is a power source.

“I know what he means. Sleuth always has to be clever and elliptical.”

When he ain’t bein’ obtuse!The Brute laughed.

That the Brute was making obscure geometric puns irritated Donovan. Sometimes he didn’t know his own mind. Ever since his sundry selves had reintegrated, they had been learning from one another. The Brute was no longer quite so simple as he once had been; though it was not as though he had blossomed into the New Socrates.

The Fudir climbed atop the bunk, studied the Eye, unscrewed a housing with a convenient tool he kept cached in his sandal, detached the live leads— See? We didn’t need a power source —and pulled the cable, while simultaneously Donovan and the others considered what they might do once they had broken free of their prison.

“Take over the ship, I suppose,” Donovan said. “Slide to Dangchao Waypoint. See Méarana … and Bridget ban.”

Don’t matter.

“Well, it might, a little.”

I wonder why she shanghaied us, said the Sleuth.

The lamp that was lit has been lit again.

What’s that mean, Silky?

Something she said. Something I remember from a dream. Pedant? You remember everything.

The corpulent, watery-eyed version of Donovan shook his massive head. Facts are my métier, not dreams.

The Fudir applied the leads from the Eye to the doorjamb, one above, the other below the point that the Pedant had identified. This ought to work, the Sleuth commented.

Of course it will, said the girl in the chiton.

Current flowed. Magnetic fields formed. Somewhere inside the door, registers zeroed out and reset.

Or were supposed to. The door remained shut.

The Brute stood and, perforce, they all stood with him. He pressed the jamb-plate—and the door slid aside into the wall. The scarred man felt a huge satisfaction.

warned Inner Child, who took control and peered cautiously into the corridor. To the left it ran four paces, ending in a T-intersection.

To the right …

To the right stood Ravn Olafsdottr with a teaser in her hand and a splash of white teeth across her coal-black face. The teaser was pointed at Donovan’s head. “Ooh, you nooty buoy,” she said in the hooting accents of Alabaster. “Soo impatient! I wood have let you oot in the ripeness of time. Now you have brooken my door!”

“You should stop somewhere for repairs, then,” suggested the Fudir. “I was on my way to Dangchao, so you can drop me off on Die Bold if you’re going that way.”

Olafsdottr patted him gently on the cheek with her free hand. “You are a foony man, Doonoovan.”

Olafsdottr fashioned him a dinner of sorts. Food preparation was not her forte, and the results could best be described as workmanlike. However, three weeks in suspension had honed an edge to the scarred man’s appetite, and he ate with surprising relish.

The refectory was small: essentially a short hallway with a door at each end, a table running down the center, and a bench on either side built into walls of a dull, ungracious gray. “This is not the most comfortable ship,” the Fudir complained.

Olafsdottr stood in the aft doorway, a double-arm’s reach distant, and her weapon still ready in her hand. She said, “One seizes the moment.”

“And the ship.”

The vessel is a monoship,the Pedant decided. Small enough for a single pilot.

She’s alone, then.

That’s good news,said the Brute.

Why?

Means we got her outnumbered.

There were few personal memorabilia aboard that he could see, but they were not Ravn’s memorabilia. Confederal agents traveled light and took what they needed when they needed it.

The Fudir waved a spoonful of a chickenlike puree at the bench across from him. “Have a seat,” he told his captor. “You look uncomfortable.”

“Do I also look foolish?” she replied.

“Afraid I’d try to jump you?”

“No.”

“Then…?”

“I meant I was not afraid, not that you would not try.”

Donovan grunted and returned his attention to his meal. So far, he had not asked the Confederal her reasons for kidnapping him. He was a past master at the game of waiting. Either Olafsdottr wanted him to know or not. If she did, she would eventually tell him. If not, asking would not win the answer.

“I will be missed, you know,” he told her.

The Ravn’s answer was a flash of teeth. “I think noot. The Bartender, he is already sailing your drinks to oother lips. ’Tis noo skin oof his noose who buys them.”

“I was on my way to Dangchao. The Hound, Bridget ban, is expecting me. When I don’t arrive…” He allowed the consequences of his nonarrival to remain unspecified. A Hound of the League could be many things and anything, as adroit and dangerous as a Confederal Shadow, and Bridget ban not least among them.

But Olafsdottr only smiled and answered in Manjrin. “Red Hound missing many years. Some associates claim credit, though I believe their bragging empty.”

“You were right to doubt them. She has returned and awaits me even now at Clanthompson Hall.”

“Ah. If so, associates much red-faced.” Olafsdottr laughed and switched to the Gaelactic that was the lingua franca of the League. “But she hardly awaits you, darling. Detestable in the ears of Bridget ban falls the name of Donovan buigh. Old grudge?”

The Fudir grimaced. “Old love.”

“Same thing, no?”

Donovan shrugged and smiled, as if to say that even old grudges had expiration dates. Olafsdottr might not believe that Bridget ban would come looking for him. Neither did Donovan; but why not sow doubts?

The Long Game between the Confederation of Central Worlds and the United League of the Periphery might be played on a chessboard of suns, and in it this agent or that might be as a grain of sand on a broad beach; but where the agents stood “in the blood and sand,” matters were more particular, and interstellar politics only the medium in which they swam. Personal loyalties mattered. Personal grudges mattered. In the sudden flash of the barracuda’s teeth, what significance has the vast and swirling ocean?