Michael Flynn - The January Dancer

“Play it.”

A window opened on the dome display just to the right of the crosshairs, revealing a flat-faced man with thin black moustaches and hair done up in greased braids that fell past his shoulders. His skin was pale with a greenish cast. Studs, rings, and gems graced every feature of his face, though effecting no discernible improvement on any of them. A golden torque encircled his neck. A ruby was set in the center of his forehead.

“G’day, to youse, yer honors,” the apparition said, with an easy confidence and a predatory smile. “Don’t be a-frightened at our little outing here, youse. We’re just passing through Sapphire Point. Welcome to it, sez I. Oh, yeah. I hight the Molnar khan Matsumo, me; chairman of the Kinlé Hadramoo out of th’ Cynthia Cluster. We’ve twenny ships exiting th’ Parkway, an’ makin’ cut-off to th’ Silk Road. No reason to go waving yer weapons all about, youse. Oh. And nothing to declare,” he added with a smile.

“Fleet exiting!” called Traffic.

“Hold all fire,” ordered the Hound.

“He didn’t say where he was bound,” Greystroke murmured to his chief.

“I noticed, Pup.” Then, louder, “Comm, put me through. What’s the time lag?”

“A grossbeat.”

“Metric time, if you please, Mr. Lazlo.”

“Sorry, sir. One-point-um-three, now.”

“Compress and squirt, then. ‘Intruder fleet, this is His Majesty’s battle cruiser, ULS Hot Gates, Sapphire Point Squadron; Cu na Fir Li commanding. This is interdicted space, and authorization is required for transit. Do you have a visa?’” A wave of laughter rippled across the bridge.

“Let me blast them,” said Fire Control. “Please?”

Na Fir Li shook his head. The Cynthians had twenty ships, all corvettes. Hot Gates and her support ships could take any one of them easily, perhaps any five of them; but she could not take all twenty. The Squadron expected to die when the Confederacy crossed the Rift; but there was no reason to die to enforce League commercial regulations on some back-cluster pirate fleet.

The reply packet came, and once more the Molnar showed his teeth. “I’m impressed such an important boy as yourself is standing by to wave at me as I pass through. And dressed so pretty, youse. Sorry ’bout th’ visa, me. Nobody told me, not even th’ late ICC factor. An’ I thought he told me everything he knew before he passed on. Ha ha!” Muffled laughter was heard in the background.

“Where away?” Fir Li asked.

The reply came sooner, as the Cynthian fleet’s trajectory brought it nearer the Squadron. “Oh, some folk need a civics lesson, and we’re to be th’ tutors.” The Molnar had a diamond stud embedded in his top right incisor. When he grinned, it flashed. “There’s been a bit of a dust-up there and they need a strong hand to set them right.”

“You’re going to raid a planet!” Fir Li said.

“Well, we won’t stay longer ’n we need to make our point! Oh. And to tell the ICC people there that they need a new factor on Cynthia Prime. Poor fella’s heart gave out. Cracking on and blinding, he was, how the ICC would settle things in Cynthia, now that they had the Twister.” The Molnar sat straighter in the viewscreen. “Maybe he didn’t know th’ insult was mortal, him bein’ an outlander, and all; but that don’t excuse him saying it. He learned better. Ha ha! So, I figger, once we have this Twister thing, we’ll be safe from th’ ICC. Don’t know why you doggies don’t go barking after them and their threatening free folk and all.”

“If you need to tell the ICC anything, you could go straight to Old ’Saken. It’s closer to Cynthia.”

The lag time had begun to increase again as the Cynthians accelerated toward the entrance to the Silk Road.

“Ha ha,” said the Molnar with apparent delight. “That’s a good one. Wait’ll I tell my wives. Old ’Saken, she’s like a lion’s den. Lotsa tracks go in; not many come out. You don’t beard a lion in his HQ, Fido. All we want is the ICC should leave free men be.”

“Free men!” said Fir Li. “Free to pillage! While across the Rift the Confederacy waits to scoop us all up. To travel so far…What profit in that?”

The Molnar’s reply this time came through grim lips. “Hear me, Fido. A man pleasures only in battle. Everything else…” He spit to the side. “Money? Love? Power? The stars care nothing; and death ends all. I live. I eat. I have women and boys. I kill. ‘The bright madness of battle,’ say the holy books. You know how th’ world works, Fido. ‘The strong take what they can; the weak suffer what they must.’ I do it better, me. I live, make sons. The weaklings, their seed is lost. You fear the ’Feds, you? Then be happy some men here know how to fight !”

“And…he’s gone,” Traffic Control announced. The pirate fleet had vanished down the Silk Road.

“I live,” said Fire Control. “I eat, I fart, I stink.”

“I have women and boys,” said Comm, “and sheep and small mammals!”

Fir Li said nothing amid the laughter, for the lawlessness endemic to the Periphery was no laughing matter. Would that the Ardry smite them as they deserve… But it took too long for the Ardry to learn of matters remote from High Tara; too long for the response to follow. In practice, the will of the Ardry and the Grand Seanaid extended no more than a week’s streaming from High Tara. And wherever his Hounds might find themselves. Each planet or planetary combine kept the peace locally as best they could. And some of them were the worst offenders.

“What was that ‘Twister’ he mentioned?” Greystroke asked. “If the ICC has come up with some new weapons system, the Ardry ought to know of it. Whatever it is, this Molnar is willing to take an entire flotilla on a long trek to grab it.”

Fir Li looked over his right shoulder, at where the Rift spread across the ceiling. “It’s a distraction from our duty. Send a swifty to High Tara and pass this Twister rumor on to the Little One. Let the Master of Hounds decide.”

“Aye, Cu,” Greystroke said and turned to the supervisor of Auxiliary Vessels and Drones; but Fir Li held him back with a word.

“Pup,” he said. “Hear me. No effort is the greatest effort. You stumble because you try too hard not to stumble.”

“A lonely duty,” the harper says and her fingers evoke the loneliness of the Rift, empty, echoing chords that seem to sound from very far away. The scarred man watches her play for a while, then he tosses off the remainder of his drink in one long swallow. His face screws up and his fists clench.

“There’s no pleasure in that draught.”

“Then why drink such slops?”

“Because there’s less pleasure in not drinking it. You need a different mode for that. Something mad. Something off-key.”

The harper introduces a dissonance into the vacancy of the Rift and proceeds in diminished sevenths, inverted. “You think na Fir Li mad?” The strings laugh, but the laughter is a little off.

“Don’t you? He believes in something that doesn’t exist.”

“The threat from the CCW.”

“No, the ULP.”

“Ah. The gap between theory and practice. He’s obsessed, not mad. There’s a difference. It’s the man who cares for nothing who may be mad. The root meaning of ‘care’ is to cry out, to scream; and what sane man is careless?”

The scarred man grunts without humor. “You caught the irony, of course. On the one hand, Fir Li regretted the Molnar’s power to pillage; but on the other, he wished his Ardry had the power to crush him. What is the difference between a pirate chief and a king but the number and quality of the ships at his command?”