Шарон Ли - Agent of Change

Miri licked her lips, steadfastly refusing to look at the screen. Val Con's face was smooth and calm, his voice nearly gentle. "If I release your prize, I shall die in any case. Pass by, Hunter. There is only I, who am recently wounded."

"My scans show two, Liaden."

Miri closed her eyes. Val Con, measuring board against screen, eased the speed of the ship higher, toward the halfway point. "Only a woman, Ckrakec Yxtrang. What proof is that of your skill?"

There was a pause, during which Val Con slipped the speed up another notch and pressed the sequence that locked in the coords.

"Will it please you, when you are captured, Liaden, to watch me while I take my pleasure from your woman? Afterward, I shall blind you and give you as a toy to my crew."

"Alas, Ckrakec Yxtrang, these things would but cause me pain." Coils up! The Yxtrang were finally near enough, beginning the boarding maneuver, matching velocity, and direction . . . .

"It would give you pain!" the Yxtrang cried. "All things give Liadens pain! They are a soft race, born to be the prey of the strong. In time, there will be no more Liadens. The cities of Liad will house the children of Yxtrang."

"What then will you hunt, O Hunter?" He flipped a series of toggles, leaned back in the pilot's chair, and held a hand out to Miri.

Slowly the ship began to spin.

There was a roar of laughter from the Yxtrang, horrible to hear. "Very good, Liaden! Never shall it be said, after you are dead, that you were an unworthy rabbit. A good maneuver. But not good enough."

In the screen, the Yxtrang ship began to spin as well, matching velocity uncertainly.

Miri's hand was cold in his. He squeezed it, gave her a quick smile, and released her, returning to the board.

He gave the ship more spin, and a touch more speed. The Yxtrang moved to match both. Val Con added again to the spin, but left the speed steady.

"Enough, Liaden! What do you hope to win? The ship is ours, and we will act to keep it. Do you imagine I will grow tired of the game and leave? Do you not know that even now I might fire upon you and lay you open to the cold of space?"

"There is no bounty on ruined ships, Ckrakec Yxtrang, nor any glory in reporting that a Liaden outwitted you. But," he said, sighing deeply, "perhaps you are young and this your first hunt—"

There was a scream of rage over the comm, and the Yxtrang ship edged closer. Val Con added more spin; ship's gravity was increasing, and lifting his arm above the board the few inches required to manipulate the keys was an effort. His lungs were laboring a little for air. He glanced over at Miri. She grinned raggedly.

"How much faster will you spin, Liaden? Until the gravity crushes you?"

"If necessary. I am determined that you will collect no bounty on this ship, Chrakec Yxtrang. It has become a matter of honor." He increased the spin. He paused with his hand on the velocity lever.

"Speak not to me of honor, animal! We have toyed long enough. We shall—"

Val Con shoved the velocity to the top, slammed on more spin, hesitated, counting, eyes on the board—

Jump!

Chapter Twenty-Six

THE BLAST HIT like a tsunami, rocking the Yxtrang ship. Overloaded equipment sparked and smoked; crew members not firmly tied down joined other loose debris thrown against walls, floor, and ceiling.

The spin made it hard to stand, to move, to understand what had happened. For the moment, chaos held the ship in its grip and squeezed lungs tight, nerves tighter.

"Report! Report now!"

Reports began to trickle in. The pilot was dazed beyond sense, his Adjutant thrown against the wall . . . .

The crew slowly pulled themselves together. Khaliiz took over the pilot's chair, read the impossible readings, and used emergency rockets to slow the spin. The Adjutant came to and began his work; he found whole compartments which refused to answer in the near darkness of the emergency lighting.

It became obvious that there was no such thing as a system: Individual processors still carried out their work, but the command computers were out, as were the backups.

Gravity came back to near normal as Khaliiz gained more and more control of his vessel. A technician managed to get one screen working, though Khaliiz was forced to rotate the ship to achieve a full 360-degree view capability.

"Commander, what happened?" ventured the Adjutant.

"Work! We speak of this later."

* * *

THEY HIT NORMAL space spinning. Hands flickered over an alarm-lit board, easing acceleration, killing spin, slowing all systems back to normal.

Val Con, shivering with reaction, drooped in the pilot's seat and turned his head, mouth curving in a smile. Then he gave a start.

Miri hung limp in the copilot's chair, held erect by the webbing, head lolling, face too white.

His fingers fumbled with the straps and he was out of the chair, kneeling before her to seek the fragile pulse in the throat. "Miri?" he whispered.

Her pulse was strong, her breathing deep. He closed his eyes in relief, then snapped to his feet and gathered her in his arms. He curled her on his lap, her head resting on his shoulder, and sat listening to her breathe and watching the unfamiliar pattern of light that was the system they were bound for.

After a time she stirred, muttering something unintelligible, and raised her head to stare into his face, her eyes slightly narrowed, as if she were looking into too bright a light.

"What'd you do?"

He lifted a brow. "When?"

She raised a hand to gesture vaguely, then allowed it to find a resting place on his chest. "With Yxtrang. Why'd they have to be so close? And the gravity—" She shuddered and his arms tightened momentarily.

"I am sorry," he said, "about the gravity. For the rest—" He grinned. "Allow me to give you your first lesson in piloting, which is this: Never, under any circumstances at all, take a ship into drive when there is another ship or mass closer than one thousandth of a light-second in any direction. It is a very dangerous thing to do. On the occasions when it has been done, one of two things occurred.

"Sometimes both objects go into hyperspace where it was planned only one would go. Neither comes out.

"The second possibility is that—if you are lucky, or foolhardy, or afraid—you will do everything perfectly for your ship and make the Jump without mishap." He sighed. "But the ship that remains behind is then immediately caught in a hysteresis energy effect proportional to the velocity and spin of the vessel that Jumped . . . ."

Miri stared at him. "Poor Yxtrang," she said, her tone belying her words. "And we're okay? On course? Whatever that means."

He nodded. "The ship is intact and we are proceeding at moderate velocity toward an unfamiliar planetary system. We should reach scanning range in—" He glanced at the board. "—seven hours."

She sighed. "Time for a good, long sleep. Or something."

"Or something," he agreed, lifting a hand to trace the line of her cheek with a light fingertip.

She grinned, then her smile faded and she pulled away from his caress, using the hand that rested on his chest to emphasize her words.

"I want you to understand one thing, okay? No distress beacons. It goes off five feet from us, we ain't moving from this ship, accazi?"

"Yes, Miri," he murmured penitently, unable to control the twitch at the side of his mouth.

"Ah, you—" She leaned forward to kiss him.

* * *

THE THIRD PLANET had possibilities, he thought some while later. Too far out for decent scanning yet—not that this brute had anything like the instrumentation a Scout ship carried—but it definitely seemed the most likely of the five.

"They're all dead, ain't they?" said a voice at his elbow. "No stations, no traffic, no orbitals . . . ." Staring at the screen, her face bleak, the glow of lovemaking gone out of her, she was shaking her head at the five little planets and their lovely yellow sun. "We're stuck in the back end of nowhere and we ain't never gettin' out." Her mouth twisted and she turned to look at him. "You think there's any people?"