Sharon Lee: Adventures in the Liaden Universe

She’d wanted to time it closer, but there was the ship to be brought up to spec, and she daren’t gamble that Vashon would find nothing wrong. Likely he wouldn’t, but it wasn’t the way to bet, not with Kore waiting for her, with who knew what on his dance card.

“Couple weeks, local,” she said to Su, and the other woman nodded.

“Let’s do this again, before I ship out,” she said, and finished off her beer in one long swallow. She thumped the bottle to the table. “For now, gotta lift. Business.”

“I hear that,” Midj said, dredging up a grin. “I’m at the Haven for the next while, then back on-ship. Gimme a holler when you know you got time for dinner. I’ll stand the cost.”

“Like hell you will,” Su said amiably. She got her feet under her and was gone, leaving Midj alo ne withthe rest of her beer and the tab.

He walked down the ramp easy, not hurrying, a pilot on his way to his ship, that was all. He turned the corner and froze on the edge of the halfway, still out of range of the camera’s wide eye and the woman leaning against the wall, gun holstered, waiting.

Waiting for him, he had no doubt. He knew her—Sambra Reallen—who hadn’t been anybody particular, and now ran in Grom Trogar’s pack; high up in the pack, though not so high that calling attention to herself might get fatal. If she was here, calmly waiting for him go through the one door he had to go through then he was too late.

He nodded, once, turned, and went back up the hall, walking no faster than he had going down, and with as little noise.

Too late, he thought, as he reached street-level. Damn.

There were two ways to play it from here, given that he’d sworn not to be a damn’ fool. The strike for the ship, that might’ve been foolish, though he’d had reason to hope that the fiction of the Judge’s continued residence would cover him. The Judge’s absence would still serve as cover, since he was the Judge’s courier. But the fact that one of Chairman Trogar’s own had been waiting for him—that was bad. He wondered how bad, as he ran his keycard through the coder.

If they’d been waiting for him at the ship, then they likely knew some things. They probably knew that the Judge and most of the household was gone, scattered, along with all the rest of the judges and staff who had managed to go missing before Grom Trogar thought to look for them. It was unlikely that they knew everything—and they’d figure that, too. Which meant he had a bad time ahead of him.

Nothing to help it now—If he ran anywhere on Shaltren, they’d catch him, and the inconvenience would only make his examination worse. If he waited for them, and went peaceably—it was going to be bad. Chairman Trogar would see to that.

If they’d been at the ship, they’d be bere soon, if they weren’t already.

The door to the house slid open.

He stepped inside, playing the part of a man with nothing to fear. His persona had long been established—a bit stolid, a bit slow, a steady pilot, been with the Judge since his itinerant days.

He flicked on the lights—public room empty. So far, so good. They’d take their time coming in— Judges and their crews, after all, had a reputation for being a bit chancy to mess with.

There was a some urgency on him, now. He’d planned for back-up; it was second nature anymore to plan for back-up. At the time it had seemed prudent and, anyway, he’d meant to be gone before it came to that.

Meant to, he thought now, walking quick through the darkened rooms, heading for the comm room and the pinbeam. Meant to isn’t will.

He’d put a life in danger. Might have put a life in danger. If the first message had gotten through . If shehadn’t just read it and laughed.

I’ll come for you, she whispered from memory, the tears running her face and her eyes steady on his. He moved faster now, surefooted in the dark. She’d come. She’d promised. Unless something radical had happened in her life, altering her entirely from the woman he had known—Midj Rolanni kept her promises.

He’d had no right to pull her in on this. Especially this. Even as a contingency back-up that was never going to be called into play. No right at all.

He slapped the wall as he strode into the comm center. The lights came up, showing the room empty—but he was hearing things now Noises on his back path. The sound, maybe, of a door being forced.

Fingers quick and steady, he called up the ‘beam, fed in the ID of the receiver. The noises were closer now—heavy feet, somebody swearing. Somewhere in one of the outer rooms, glass shattered shrilly.

He typed, heard feet in the room beyond, hit send, cleared the log and spun, hands up and palms showing empty.

“If you’re looking for the High Judge,” he said to man holding the gun in the doorway. “He’s not home.”

Vashon not finding anything about to blow down in Skeedaddle’s innards, and the vent upgrade going more smoothly than the man himself had expected, Midj was back on-board in good order inside of eight local days.

She stowed her kit and initiated a systems check, easing into the pilot’s chair with a sigh of relief . The ship was quiet, the only noises those she knew so well that they didn’t register with her anymore, except as a general sense of everything operating as it should. Of all being right in her world, enclosed and constrained as it was.

When she ran with a ‘hand—never with a partner, not after Kore—the noises necessarily generated by another person sharing the space would distract and disorient her at first, but pretty soon became just another voice in the overall song of the ship.

And whenever circumstances had her on-port for any length of time, she came back to the ship with relief her overriding emotion, only too eager to lower the hatch and shut out the din of voices, machinery and weather.

Hers. Safe. Comfortable. Familiar. Down to the ancient Vacation on Incomparable Panore holocard Kore’d given her as a yet unfulfilled promise after one particularly hard trade run.

She’d thought before now that maybe it was time to start charting the course of her retirement. Not that she was old, though some days she felt every Standard she’d lived had been two. But she did have a certain responsibility to her ship, which could be expected to outlive a mere human’s span—hell, it had already outlived two captains, and there wasn’t any reason it wouldn’t outlast her.

She ought to take up a second—a couple of the cousins were hopeful, so she’d heard. The time t o trainher replacement was while she was still in her prime, so control could be eased over gradual, with her giving more of her attention to TerraTrade, while the captain-to-be took over ship duty, until one day the change was done, as painless as could be for everyone. That’s how Berl took Skeedaddle over from Mam, who had gone back to the planet she’d been born to for her retired years, and near as Midj had ever seen on her infrequent visits, missed neither space nor ship.

Berl, now Midj shook her head, her eyes watching the progress of the systems check across the board. In a universe without violence—in a universe without the Juntavas—Berl would’ve been standing captain yet, and his baby sister maybe trading off some other ship. Maybe she’d been running back-up on Skeedaddle , though that wasn’t the likeliest scenario, her and her brother having gotten along about as well as opinionated and high-tempered sibs ever did.

Still and all, he hadn’t deserved what had come to him; and she hadn’t wanted the ship that bad, having found a post that suited her on the Zar family ship. Suited her for a number of reasons, truth told, only one of them being the younger son, who came on as her partner once she’d understood Berl was really dead, and Skeedaddle was hers.