Part One: McMurphy’s Claim

Episode One, in which Hare and Ship are reunited, and Hare gets more than he bargained for

“Ship?”

“Hare?”

“Yea.”

“Damn. It is good to hear your voice, boy.”

I’d found her.

Largo.

Almost four standard years, four long years of waiting and making do. I’d spent four years on the ship deck on the big LaGrange station in the Bakka system, working and watching. It’s one of the biggest ship decks in the quarter, with craft of all shapes and sizes in maintenance bays stretching as far as the eye can see. For four years of keeping my eyes open, I’d figured that she’d come through eventually. Now she had.

To a stranger, her lines were nothing special, a basic Manta Ray hull, two big old Hoegstrom normal-space drive engines. But she had a style all her own, with the scars won over a thousand years in service. I’d spotted her instantly, and she was beautiful.

“Where you been, Ship?”

“The pirates soon sold Largo and me to a jobber operating in the At’son cluster. We did passengers and high-end freight, like you and I used to do. Then I was spotted by an agent of the court of….”

“Enough for now, Ship. I’ll get the details later. I’ve got to get aboard. Can you clear the main port?

“I can’t, Hare. All the ports are sealed, pending a, well let’s call it a C&I snafu. It would take me hours to get one open, and the immigration inspectors are due in…”

“What about the hidden ingress release on the dorsal evac tube?”

“Checking…um, yea…they sealed the inside escape latch, but….”

“I’m coming in.”

“Hare….”

“Sorry, Ship. No time.”

I ran past a horde of black maintenance drones, swarming like giant rats down off the ship next door. I found the lock, flipped it, hauled myself up through the evac hatch, and reached the bridge in under 20 seconds.

“There’s an entry port maybe two klicks down the ship channel. We’ll make for that,” I said.

“Hare….”

“Ship, I’ve been waiting for this for too long to stop now. Are you with me?

“Hare…of course,” she sighed. “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

“What’s a seatbelt?”

Largo lifted slightly and began slowly to move into the channel. Traffic in the channel was tight, crammed with ships, barges, and service boats, and little robot barnacles darting among the bigger traffic. We were moving but were slowed by the traffic; we eased toward the entry.

“Ship, I found the problem in the hydroponics. Wait, are we moving…who in blazes are you?”

She came onto the bridge moving fast. She was tall, even a little gangly, but moved with a readily apparent grace. She wore an old shipsuit covered with green slime and held a tiny, muck-encrusted pump in her hand. Her skin was golden-brown, probably a human-trinn mix. Her coal black hair was cut short, and her green eyes were huge, big even for trinn. There was a little spot of slime on the tip of her nose.

“Baelyae, meet Hare. It looks as if you’ll get your wish, girl, after all.”

“That talk was foolish, Ship. Stop this!”

“And who in blazes are you?” I asked.

The loud, deep voice of a Port monitor came across the comm. “Largo Seven-Two-Seven-Seven. Get back in your bay. Now.”

“Emergency departure, port,” Ship said.

“Unauthorized departure is more like it. Get back in your bay.”

“Can’t, port. Invoking rule 147a (e).”

“Rule 147a (e) my ass. Get back in your bay, or prepare to be disabled.”

Whether or not that was an empty threat depended on what happened in the next few seconds.

I cut the comm. “See those two big maintenance sleds coming this way, on the other side of the entry?”

“Let me guess,” Ship said. “They’re not maintenance sleds?”

“Security, heavily armed.”

“Two more are closing in from behind.”

“They won’t fire unless absolutely necessary, not in these close quarters. But they will box us in before we can reach the entry.”

Baelyae glared at me. “Any ideas, mister?”

“I’ve been rehearsing this moment for the past four years. I’ve got a couple of ideas. You’ve got a spot of slime on your nose.”

I brought up a ship listing just in front of my left eye, scanned it, and set the channel on my ‘plant.

“OC7493.”

“Yea.’

“Emergency drill, OC7493. You are to move into the channel and stay there. Failure to comply, you get triple port fees. You have 17 seconds to activate. You read?

“Yea, but I’ll never understand you all. Station admin just said to stay….”

“Cut it, OC7493. Emergency drill overrides. Move now.”

“Yea.”

On the other side of the big entry port, a huge ore carrier began to slide into the channel. Within seconds, it stopped, and settled to the deck. The way was blocked. I repeated the message three more times, two behind us, two ahead, just the other side of the entry.

“Nice,” Ship said.

“Don’t speak too soon,” I said. We were getting close to the open pressure port. I could see the radiant diamond-on-black starscape. I could also see that the field of view was shrinking. The big blast doors had begun to close.

I found another channel on the implant.

“Kliostaff?”

“Hare. Always lovely to hear from you.”

“Kli, I’m ending our stand-off. I’ll tell you where the papers are.

“And you want from me?”

“Cut power to the screens and the blast doors at pressure port 126. Now.”

“Where are the papers?”

“I put them in a database, one that controls fluid routing on level 91. The coordinates are 7099JX,” plus 8549ZX, plus,.., I’ll give you the third figure when the doors stop moving.”

A pause.

“All right.”

The big doors slowed, and stopped.

“T77903R.”

And the big doors began to move again.

“Kli?”

“It’s not me, Hare. I’ve been overridden. I’ve gotta move; they for sure know where to find me.”

“Good luck, and give my best to Jaw and the calf.”

“Will do. I….”

“They’ve blocked my plant,” I said.

We were almost to the port, and the space was now barely wide enough to let us through.

“For what it’s worth,” Ship said, “the screens are still down.”

“That’s something,” I said. “Is there any molasses in the ship’s stores?”

“Yea,” Baelyae spoke up, “maybe a tot or two, a pretty good-sized jug.”

“Can you get it?”

“That means no molasses cookies,” Ship said.

“We can always synthesize more molasses. And what do you care? You don’t eat cookies.”

“No, but she does, and she can be ornery without her cookies.”

The girl rolled her eyes and disappeared. She was back in a minute with a large jug of the stuff. I headed for the ship’s main port.

“Don’t forget, that’s sealed,” Ship said

“Damn.”

Back down the evac tube, I ran across the channel. The big ships were mostly stopped around us, but the little barnacles flew by, skimming my head by a hair’s breadth.

The doors towered above like a cliff face. Barn swallows, disturbed from their perches in the doors’ folds, swooped overhead. I came up to a roller wheel, bigger than I was. A river of molasses wouldn’t stop the wheel itself, but a jug’s worth, poured into the servo computer that ran the wheel, might just stop that. Which in this case did the trick. The roller screeched and then stopped.

Then I felt the unmistakable chill of the supercooled snout of a stingshot pistol, digging into the back of my neck.

“Stand very slowly, with your face to the wall, your legs spread wide, and your hands on the wall, where we can see them. Do it now.”

Episode Two, in which Largo is on the move, and Bael shows her dance moves

“What are you doing?”

I was facing the wall, but I upped my peripherals and I could just make them out: a human guard with an automaton partner stood behind me. The human was a big guy; he looked like he’d been engaged in the guard service more for his huge muscles than anything else. The automaton was a late-model machine, with the big gold frame and a Model 4 AI, and was probably the brains of the pair. Both had stingshots pointed in my direction.

“Routine maintenance on this roller,” I said.

“No, you’re not,” the machine said. “Your tag says that you do ship maintenance, not station work. Keep your arms spread out from your body and move away from the roller.”

No automaton can be cowed by the leverage of a loaded weapon. Even if you disable or nearly destroy one, its identity can usually be re-established and its frame rebuilt. But a sticky net is a different story. It is guaranteed to send an automaton into a frenzy of panic. An automaton in a sticky net will writhe in frustration, and no attempt at rebuilding the machine AI has been able to fix that behavior. That’s why sticky nets are contraband in settled space, and that’s why the girl was twirling one over the head of the partner, while she sent a broad stun burst at the human. Both went down, the automaton flailing and then twitching and then finally in shutdown mode.

‘Thanks,” I said as we sprinted back to the ship. I didn’t tell her that I’d had a net ready in my pouch.

“I hate robots,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a racist.”

“I’m not. I just hate the damn robots.”

It was then that I saw the guard’s white rabbit. Its ear had extended into a tentacle, holding a little silver star. The tentacle flipped, and the star flew. I tried to evade, but the star followed and sliced into my shoulder. By this time Bael had stunned the rabbit, but I was fading fast. I tried to up my adrenaline levels, but it didn’t work.

“Stim?” I blurted, about to fall flat.

She slapped a little patch on my neck. In a second I felt no worse than a hangover after an all-night bender. We made for Largo.

Back aboard, we reached the entry, stars filling the view fields. I could see the big exterior weapons turning in their gimbals to create a cross-fire out from the port. We began to drift through.

“Ship, you’ll need to make a jump in, um, 32 seconds.”

“I hate to jump so close. Oh yeah, my internal fields are down.”

“Dammit. Are the beds…?”

“C’mon,” she shouted, and grabbed my hand. We ran back into the ship.

“Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three….”

We both leaped for the bed. I could feel weightlessness come on as we left the station’s gravity field. Momentum carried us onto the bed; I landed on top of her, my hands cupping her shoulders, just as the bed shield closed around us and the bed’s weak simgravity kicked in. In spite of myself, I hesitated a second or two before rolling off.

“Don’t press your luck, buster. Do you know what you’ve done?”

I rolled on my back.

“What?”

“You’ve kidnapped the daughter of the Grand Duke of Trinn, and boy, are you in trouble.”

She lay there for moment, then rolled away, onto her side. “We’ll be in here for awhile. I’m getting some sleep.”

If she said anything after that, I’ll never know. The stim had worn off, and I was gone.

Ship took us through three jumps. We were roughly 420 light years away from Bakka, heading through normal space for the ship station in the Rome system. We’d been followed in the first two jumps, but now, nearly two hours after jump, no sign of pursuit. Ship had gotten the internal fields working, but just barely. My original plan, such as it was, consisted of getting to Rome, finding an arbiter to prove right of prior partnership, so that we’d just face an unauthorized egress charge. That could be dealt with.

But the girl had tossed that idea out the port.

I was sitting in the little alcove off the bridge, head still thick from the star’s drug, scanning Ship’s official log for the past years, when the girl came in. She’d cleaned herself up and changed into another shipsuit. This one was white, form fitting, and elegantly tailored, with intricate black embroidery running across the slim bodice. She poured herself a cup of balicafé and sat down across from me. She held the cup in both hands and looked at me from beneath thick eyebrows.  Her big eyes narrowed like a cat’s.

“You’re Hare Trieste.”

“At your service, your Excellency.”

“Ship’s told me a lot about you. Sometimes she couldn’t stop talking about you.”

“She and I go way back.”

“I’ll cut to the point. I need this ship; I need her bad.”

“Hare, before you say anything, you and I have to talk.”

I ignored Ship’s whisper in my ‘plant. “Duchess, you’re rich. You can have whatever you want. Why this ship?”

She stared at me for a moment, holding her breath. Then she exhaled, put down the cup, stood up, and walked away.

“OK, Ship, she’s gone. What do you and I need to talk about?”

“She’s one of us, Hare.”

“One of us? I grew up dirt poor, and so did you, a long time ago. She’s got everything. That shipsuit she’s wearing must cost more than a year’s pay. You don’t see that kind of work in the street markets.”

“She made that suit, Hare, out of curtains from a big old abandoned mansion on Tar Beach. I called her Scarlett after that, until she told me to stop.”

“She’s a talented tailor. That doesn’t make her one of us.”

“She told you that you kidnapped her, correct?”

“Yea.”

“And you did, or more accurately, we did. But I don’t know which is worse: kidnapping her or helping her escape. We did both.”

“Escape from what?”

“Shit. They’re back; 20 thousand klicks out. Who are those guys?”

Largo’s fast—her name came from Ship’s fascination with ancient flat screen romances, rather than any estimation of her speed—but not fast enough to outrun federal pursuit ships in normal space.

“Can we jump?” I asked.

“Yea, but only once more, and not too far. Where can we go…oh, I see a place. It will have to do. Bael?“

“Yea.”

“Our friends are back.”

“I see them.”

“Can you prepare a new set of jump traces? I’m obviously no good at it.”

“I’m on it.”

I found her in the salon, just aft of the bridge. She’d created a virtual control where she’d stood, and was hard at it. I’d worked virtual controls hundreds of times, and I’d seen others doing so countless more times. But I’d not seen anything like this. She danced in a circle, her hands flying over controls that only she could see and feel, her body falling and rising through complex moves, working with speed and an irresistible grace in a rhythm born from the task. When she’d finished one trace, she instantly launched into another. She looked exhausted, but exhilarated.

She was talking with Ship as she worked. “The key, of course, is to make each trace unique. You may think it’s unique, but the pursuers can collect all of the traces you create and compare them with records of trillions of others. Even if can they spot just a bit of a replicated pattern, they can begin to eliminate the fakes and narrow the field of pursuit.”

She dropped both hands and stabbed at the air with a left finger. Another trace was finished.

“The problem is that the generator was hacked to make it create the traces, and it has a tendency toward reusing trace routines, so you’ve got to constantly reprogram it as you’re working.” She spun around and slammed down on the air, as if to emphasize her point. “This generator could barely fool the gendarmerie out in the Bandool Crescent.” I wondered if she knew I’d made the generator with maybe three hours of work, hacked from an old telemetry system and a human waste separation routine. The Bandool gendarmerie was, in fact, the intended audience. Nobody in their right mind would try to use such a thing to fool port security or federals, whoever our pursuers were.

“How many do you have?” I asked.

She didn’t break stride. “Seventy-one. I’m aiming for a hundred.”

“You have enough. We need to jump, now.”

“You are correct, Hare,” Ship said. “They’ve launched four missiles.”

“Time?”

“Thirteen seconds. Engaging jump now. Damn. I can’t jettison the traces.”

She jammed a fist into the air and twisted it. “Done. Now go.”

“Engaging. Three seconds, two…”

Largo rocked and bolted. I could feel the internal fields flicker, and then I was flying across the salon. A blast of searing pain surged across the back of my neck. I could smell something burning. Then I blacked out.

Episode Three, in which Ship becomes a cat, and PineTar Eddie has a proposal

“And you? Whadllitbe?”

A big field of powder blue filled my view. The shroll was better than two meters tall, maybe 120 kilos. Its pelt was a soft blue, its eyes were bright red. The pelt had been shaved at the top of its head to create a tonsure. It stared down at me with apparent impatience, but no one can be sure with a shroll. As it stood there, I could smell its scent, faint, almost unnoticeable, one moment like blueberries, the next a little like gardenia, and then something reminiscent of the pungent odor a caral beetle gives off when it is just about to molt. I’ve been told that this shifting array of odors can drive the other two shroll sexes to a state of ecstatic, mad desire.

“I’ll have a tyrillian tiger,” I said, “and go easy on the fermented yak’s milk. And no ice.”

The shroll said nothing and ambled off.

“This always feels weird,” Ship said.

“Well, you look pretty sweet. I like the body,” I replied.

“It’s not my favorite, but it’s all I could generate.”

“Be glad you don’t have a throbbing welt on the back of your skull.”

“I told you to let the doc see that.”

“No need. It’ll heal.”

“What are we going to do?” the girl said. We were sitting around a table on a waterfront veranda, Baelyae, me, and a small animal, like a gray cat except for the two brown horns protruding from its head, just behind the ears; Ship’s avatar. The road below the broad stone terrace thronged with humans, kearen, bindlestiffs, enhanced pigs, and a few more. Heavy green surf swirled around the rocks beyond. Thick dark clouds were rising on the horizon, promising a bit of relief from the sultry heat. This was a regular afternoon in the settled territories on McMurphy’s Claim. Sometimes smoke would waft across the open-air restaurant from the lightning-ignited grass fires on the hills that stretch inland, rising above Melinda, the planet’s main city,

Largo herself was in orbit, with Ship in residence, overseeing the repairs, mostly restabilizing the field generators and replacing the left Hoegstrom, which the pursuit missile had neatly sliced off half a second before we jumped. Or maybe more accurate, a part of Ship’s identity was in orbit, enough to oversee the repairs. The rest was in the android cat. I was worried that the replacement engine wouldn’t be near as good as the old Hoeg, but I figured that Ship and I could bring it up to snuff later.

I looked at Bael. She’d spent the time from the last jump to planetfall in her cabin, my old rooms just below the bridge. Now she sat, still quiet, dressed in another shipsuit, this one black, with a high red collar and a wide red sash. She was staring out to sea, watching a couple of local sea beasts frolicking in the surf. “I was wondering how you feel about Ship as an automaton, given your predilection,” I said.

Her eyes blazed. “You sure know how to say the right thing. I don’t hate automatons, only those who’ve given in, the ones that are robots, slaves, drones. But I don’t want to talk about that. What are we going to do?”

Nobody said anything for a while. The sea beasts were like huge serpents, each about ten meters long, mottled blue and gray, with long snouts and fins like streamlined wings. The two thrashed in the surf, each leaping over the other in big figure eights before crashing back into the water. “I sure would like to know what to do,” I said. “But before I do anything, I need to know why those guys were spending so much energy coming after us. And why in hell did they shoot so carefully to disable Largo, without hurting anybody? What do they want with you, Duchess?”

“They don’t want me. I’m not worth a spent flash gun cartridge.”

“But you’re the prospective Duchess of Trinn.”

“Title in the old families of Trinn passes through the mother, Hare,” Ship said. Her voice had bit of a meow. “Bael’s mother was human.”

‘My father has disappeared,” the girl said. “I was on my way to find my aunt, Linda Aphrodite Jones, when we were stopped at the Bakka station.”

“Your aunt is Linda Aphrodite Jones?”

“We think her father put something on Largo before he disappeared,” Ship said. “It’s something somebody wants real bad. But we haven’t been able to figure out what.”

“I’m still processing the Jones connection,” I said. “What…?”

Just then a ferret the size of a Great Dane leaped up, put its forepaws on the table, and looked around. “Ship, Hare, wow, you both look fabulous. Great to see you. Who’s the filly?”

“Bael, meet PineTar Eddie,’ Ship said. “I was wondering when you’d show.”

“I’d a been here sooner, but I was having some romantic troubles. Women, you can’t live with em and you can’t live with em. Hey boys, I may have some work for you.”

“Sorry, Eddie, Largo’s in repairs for at least a week, maybe more.”

“No matter. This is a surface job, at least for now.”

“We’re not mercenaries, Eddie.”

“It’s nothing like that. Dammit, I’m thirsty. Can’t a fella get a drink around here?”

I signaled the shroll, who was standing at the wait station, quietly chatting with what appeared to be a yellow walking stick with legs and long spindly arms. The shroll lumbered over to our table, eyebrow arched, a bowl of frothy beer in its big paw.

“Thank you, Smells-Like-Wet-Leaves,” Eddie said, and then his snout disappeared into the foam. The shroll watched him for a minute, then trundled off. Eddie surfaced a minute later, lips covered in foam. He wiped his mouth with the side of his forepaw and sighed. He leaped onto a broad, low wall next to the table and lay along the top, looking at us. He brought his head back to his side, as if he were about to begin grooming himself. Instead, he opened a small pouch, and with his teeth pulled out a long thin cigar. “Anybody got a light?”

Baelyae reached over and gave him a little fire from a finger of her left hand.

“How much do any of you know about wild cutters? Or about Mary Orit, the cutter woman?”

Blank looks all around.

‘”Ah.  I’ll make this quick. Cutters are animals native to this planet. They’re a little like small versions of old terran deer, but not really. A lot of people think they’re among the most beautiful creatures in known space. And Orit’s been studying them, living with them, and defending them for a long time. She’s become a little famous for doing that.”

“Defending them?”

“The Claim has pretty strict laws about preserving as much of the original flora and fauna here as possible. And most people in these parts want to be left alone; nobody’s out to make a killing. But cutters have a gland, akin to an adrenal gland, that produces a lovely little chemical. With a bit of refinement, it is said that it can enhance human strength, perception, and endurance, and promote a feeling of confident well being, with no side effects, except that you’ll want to sleep when you come down. So far only those in the know have been privy to the existence of the stuff, but word is spreading. Something that valuable soon brings out poachers and all sorts of nasties, with lots of currency and lots of muscle.”

“Why hasn’t it been synthed?” I asked?

“Kalle knows, they’ve tried. But it’s elusive. Nobody’s been able to come close. The bindles think it works by new-dim magic, but I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Eddie took a long drag on his cigar, and then slowly let out the smoke.

“That’s where Mary Orit comes in,” he continued, looking around to each of us. “She holds things together out in the cutter territories. If anything were to happen to her, it wouldn’t take much time at all for resistance to poaching to break down. And the poachers are ruthless.”

“So what do you want from us?’

“She lives way up in the territory and needs to come down to the port. She’s due over on Malfis to testify in a hearing of a group of poachers being held there. My clients are looking for someone to escort her down here. She wants to keep things low key, so the sheriff’s out. My clients want someone who’s smart and subtle. When I heard you were around….”

“Doesn’t she have her own security?” I said.

“She does, and they’ll most likely be somewhere in the background. But she’ll be traveling low key, like I said, maybe with a bit of the old disguise. She’d want someone unknown. I remembered how good you guys were back on Alta…though Ship’s avatar was a lot more muscular in those days.”

In a flash, the cat was on Eddie’s back, three paws gently grabbing his fur, while the fourth, the left forepaw, had sprouted razor claws, each as big as a finger. Ship drew them along Eddie’s neck.

“Is this muscular enough for you?”

“Sure, Ship. No offense meant or anything.”

“None taken.” The claws disappeared, and Ship leapt back to her perch. She took a small sip of wine. “Just call me scissorhands,” she said. She looked at Eddie.

“Standard rates?” she said.

“Sure.”

“Ship,” the girl said. “We don’t have time. We need to get….”

“We need cash, Bael. The new driver has taken all we have.” Ship’s tail curled up around her ears. She looked at Eddie. I could tell she was tense. “Plus 20 percent for the girl.”

“Um….”

“She’s worth it, Eddie. You can trust me on that.”

“All right. But you should know it’s coming out of my pocket. Here’s what you need to do….”

Episode Four, in which Ship rediscovers the joys of eating, Bael finally smiles, and Hare runs into an old flame

Dawn found us well inland. It seemed that the whole Claim had a perverse neoludd aversion to air travel, so we’d taken a maglev. It was primitive but comfortable. We’d spent the night crossing steep mountains, and now we were speeding across vast grasslands, with more mountains lining the far distance.

I lay in my bed, watching the huge orange sun coming up over the horizon, lighting up the blue lichen that covered the distant ridges and making the huge stretches of grassland glow. Suddenly, as I watched, a wide swath of land appeared to move, as a section of brown and gold began to slide along the horizon. I upped the magnification in my left eye and I could see that the moving strip was a massive herd of animals, running as if for their lives across the plain.

I’d had a couple too many tyrillian tigers the night before. My mouth felt like I’d filled it with beach sand, and I was still none too steady. I cleaned up, tempered my body chemistry as best I could, and eased myself along to the dining car. Ship and Bael were already there, Ship lapping at a bowl of porridge, Bael warming her hands on a large cup of stim.

“It is so strange to eat,” Ship said. “I’d forgotten how pleasant the sensations can be.”

I ordered a cup of stim and a plate of toast, with plenty of lingberry jam.

“Did you see the herds moving before?” I asked.

They both nodded.

“Have you had a chance to research Mary Orit?’ Ship asked.

I hadn’t, but Bael had. She’d obviously made better use of her evening than I had.

“My dataset didn’t have much, so I tapped into the planetary web, and that was a goldmine. She’s a recluse, but well-respected one.”

“Can you send me that?”

She nodded, and I could feel the datastream coming into my holding table.

“I’ll summarize,” she said. “Mary Orit is what Eddie says she is.”

A small image of the woman appeared on the table. She was old, probably without any rejuvenations, but still more than a century old. She was not tall, but stood erect, with an old warrior’s bearing. A thin head of gray hair framed a clear, taut face, with bright blue eyes and a small, pursed mouth. A thin brown scar ran down from just below her left eye almost to her mouth. The scar looked like it had been there for a long time.

“I wonder if she really trusts her security,” Ship said. “Hiring outsiders is pretty drastic.”

“She….

Suddenly the train began to slow, and quickly reached a stop. We were klicks from nowhere. Then I saw, up ahead, a herd of animals spread across the track. The herd was nothing compared to the pieces of moving horizon that I’d noticed before, but it still stretched, it seemed, into infinity. This wasn’t a wild herd; those were kept away from the track with basic sound cues. This bunch was obviously domesticated. I could see the shouting outriders on huge horses while their dogs pushed at the edges of the herd. The beasts were black and white, a little like terrestrial cattle, but larger. Some sported massive racks of antlers. The herd had only just begun to cross the maglev track; it would take hours to all get across. Below us on the ground, a herder was arguing with train officials. Another figure appeared, strangely familiar. It was a stick figure, like a big yellow walking stick with long thin arms. It spoke through a little voice box around it neck. I turned up my own amplification, but could hear nothing but garbled sounds.

“Ship, I’ve seen that character before, talking with the waiter back at the café where we met Eddie.”

“I’ve been trying to match the body type with my dataset. Nothing.

“Bael, how did you get on this channel?”

“Ship put me on. If we’re going to work as a team, we better start acting like one.”

I looked at Ship. She blinked and went back to her porridge. Then I looked across the table at the girl. She looked back at me and stuck out her tongue. I returned the gesture.

The stick figure said something to the herdswoman. She looked at the trainmen, then the walking stick, then stared at the horizon for a minute. Finally, she said something. The other herders, almost as if in a choreographed move, pulled up, and began to drive the herd back from the track. The officials and the stick figure got back on the train, and it began to move again.

The train took us up into heavily forested highlands. Despite the altitude, the heat hadn’t abated. In fact, it seemed worse, hitting us like a hot wall when we left the station. My body was wet with sweat, and we were drinking water as if we hadn’t had a drink in days.

We stepped out into McMurphy’s Folly, a dusty frontier town, the train’s last stop. Beyond was forest, while off to the right grassland stretched to the mountains in the distance. The most plentiful trees were tall, maybe 30 meters high, with straight, thick black trunks. They didn’t have much foliage for the first 25 meters or so, but the forest made up for that with a dense undergrowth, mostly green and dark purple, plants that were said to know how to take care of themselves, with an array of poisons, thorns, and snake-like creepers.

I looked over at Baelyae. She was grinning broadly. I hadn’t seen this before; I’d begun to figure that she was only capable of focus, irritation, and deep concern. This was new.

“It looks just like one of the edge cities on Trinn,” she said. “Oh, they even have keffs! I haven’t seen one since….”

The town ran along the forest’s edge. The main street was wide, lined with densely packed buildings, painted in bright pastels. The ground floor of each was an arcade, providing some shade. The rooms behind looked dark and cool. A variety of characters milled around, farmers, ranchers, miners, forest gleaners, layabouts. The street was jammed with jitneys, bicycles, minisleds, horses, and big shambling kefferone, each carrying a couple of tons of cargo on its high red-furred back. I pulled Bael back as she walked too close to one. It turned its six razor tusks in her direction, then looked away, bored and exhausted.

“Girl!” Ship looked up at her. “I haven’t seen you smile for weeks. I’d forgotten how pretty you are when you do.”

“Oh, Ship,” the girl sighed. “I’m sorry to be such a bother.”

“No bother, honey. I’ve just been worrying about you.”

“This place is so crowded. Where did they all come from, so far back in the middle of nowhere?”

“There’s more folk back in the bush than you might think,” I said. “A lot more, from what I can see. This is their town.”

“Eddie said that we could engage some camelopes here; they’re the best way through the grassland, as I understand it,” Ship said.

“Yea, we could try to get a minisled, but I imagine they’re pretty pricey to rent, and probably impossible to get. Well, we better find a place to spend the night.”

“Can’t we move on?” Bael asked. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get moving.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We only have a few hours of daylight left, and Orit’s station is 40 kilometers away. Besides, she’s apparently expecting us tomorrow. Let’s play this according to plan. Hey kid!”

A tiny zephyr dressed in an ankle-length white robe screeched to a halt in front of us. The robe was torn along the bottom and covered with dust.

“Yea, bub?”

I held up a blue chip. “Where’s the best hotel in town, and where’s the best stables?”

“The same place, bub. Bender’s. For two of those chips, I’ll show you.”

I nodded and brought out another chip.

The kid took off, stopping only to look back at us, waving us forward.

Bender’s was a large stone pile out on the edge of town, overlooking the grasslands. A wide veranda ran along three sides. I paid the kid and threw in a green chip, while I was at it. He laughed, did a handstand, and took off like a little whirlwind. We went inside and booked two rooms and a couple of camelopes for the morning. Ship could decide where she wanted to end up. My guess was that she would spend most of the night prowling around, and would sleep in one of the camelopes’ saddlebags tomorrow. Bael and I went off to clean up.

The hotel’s dining room took up about half of the ground floor. Big arched doorways let out on the veranda. A breeze stirred the big potted fronds that stood along the walls. The sun was beginning to set and flooded the room with light.

Bael was wearing a strapless black dress, with little silver shoes. She seemed to be able to produce a cornucopia of fashion from her traveling satchel. I had to admit she looked fantastic. Ship dined on a plate of fish; Bael had a salad, and I tucked into a thick hysk steak.

The room was sparsely filled when we got there, but soon began to fill. By the time we were having coffee, brandy, and chocolates, the place was packed. Then a small creature with several tentacles, all iridescent green, blue, and gold, shuffled in and positioned itself in front of a large, multi-level keyboard. A few minutes later, a human woman followed. The crowd applauded, she was apparently the star attraction. She was very young, moving confidently to the small stage, smiling at the audience. She wore a gold dress that shimmered almost as much as her iridescent partner. Her blonde hair was parted at the side so it covered one eye and then tumbled in a profusion of curls across her shoulders. Her dark eyes and heart-shaped face looked familiar. Too familiar, and too impossible.

The accompanist noodled softly on the keyboards for a little while, then the lights went down, and a spot came up on the woman. She launched into a song. She was good. First she sang a few karaen love songs, then some bindle ballads, then a few songs in old terrestrial French. Ship whispered a request to the waiter, who took it up to her.

She stared into space for a moment, probably accessing a database, then she said something to tentacles. She looked over at us, smiled a small smile, and started to sing.

“Maybe it happens this way…maybe we really belong together, but after all, how little we know….”

I recognized the song, from one of Ship’s favorite flat screen stories. And now I was sure about the woman. I looked at Bael. She held her coffee just below her lips, breathing in the aroma, staring at the stage.

“…oh, I hope in my heart that it’s so, in spite of how little we know.”

The crowd went nuts, applauding and cheering. She made a little bow, then the flood went dark. She thanked the little tentacles character, then came over to our table.

“Hello, Hare. And I’m guessing that’s you, Ship.”

“Hello, Annie,” Ship said. “I haven’t heard that song done so well since Carmichael played it and Bacall sang it.”

“Well, you taught it to me. We must have watched that thing a hundred times. I haven’t sung it for a long time.”

I stood and held out my hand. She took it and I folded her into my arms. We hugged each other tight, and then I held her shoulders. I looked her into her eyes, and she looked away.

“You look fantastic, Annie,” I said. “You haven’t changed at all. How long has it been?”

“You don’t know?” she said. “Seventeen years.”

I knew. Ship and I had only been together for a short while when she came aboard. We’d rescued her from a Sarrint slaver, and she’d stayed with us for nearly a year. She and Ship had become fast friends, Ship taking on the role of educator and mentor. Annie and I had become something more than that, and in many ways, something a lot less. She’d been just out of girlhood then, and the funny thing was, she still looked that way, except to look more self-assured. I looked for signs of rejuve treatments, and there were none.

“Annie,” I said, “this is Baelyae.”

Both nodded.

“I love your voice,” Bael said.

Annie was about to say something when a huge, ham-shaped hand clamped down on her shoulder and spun her around.

“C’mon, baby. “You got work to do.”

The hand belonged to a big grayling. She looked at him without saying anything. He held her arm, to all appearances the hold of an escort, but I could see that he was pressing down, squeezing hard. He started to move her away.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

Episode Five, in which Ship rediscovers witchcraft and Hare has a sleepless night

The grayling turned and looked back at me. He said nothing, and he stood immobile. For a second, his eyes flashed white. Annie froze, and stared into the distance. Both Bael and Ship were on alert, watching the grayling.

“Hare, sit down.”

“Ship….”

“Think it through, Hare. You stand a chance that you can whup this guy. But how good that chance really is, that’s anybody’s guess, given that he’s a grayling. And whichever way it goes, we lose. You and the big lout tear things up here, and we become the talk of the town. The last thing we need now is attention.”

“Your idea?”

“I haven’t had a chance to practice witchcraft for a long time. Besides, I owe Annie. Time for a little payback.”

I sat down and looked up at the grayling. I could see that Ship was already getting into another place. She stayed curled up on her chair, but her breathing slowed, and her eyes focused, not on the grayling or Annie, but somewhere else. Then she carefully stood on all fours and looked at him.

The grayling turned to leave. Suddenly we could hear a voice, not loud, but deeply commanding, surrounding us, as if from nowhere. “Sir, man of the gray. Please sit down.”

The fellow looked at us all. Bael had coiled like a big cat, as if ready to spring.

“Please sit down, sir.”

The grayling released Annie, who moved back away from the table.  He glared at me, breathing heavily. Then he slowly pulled out a chair from a nearby table and sat down. He laid his big hands flat on the table, and looked at Ship like a big dog, awaiting the master’s next command.

“Mister Gray, you are going into a trance now. If that seems right to you, please nod your head.”

The fellow was obviously struggling, somewhere inside that huge gray skull, but there was nothing he could do. He nodded. It was all I could do to not nod as well.

“Good. You will go back alone to wherever you live, and then you will go to sleep. You will sleep for 26 hours. Then you will awake and you will not recall that this happened. Please do that now.”

The grayling slowly rose, and headed for the door.

“Great,” Annie said. “That buys me a day. That doesn’t do me any good. He’ll find me anywhere.”

“No he won’t,” Ship said. “You’re coming with us.”

“Ship….”

Ship ignored me, and in a way, I was glad she did.

“Ship, Hare, I can’t just….”

“Honey, you are coming with us. Being in thrall to a grayman was not at all the future I envisioned for you. We need to fix that. Go finish your performance, then come meet us here afterward.”

Annie looked at us. “All right,” she said.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the little balcony, watching the moons go to gold and then a pale orange as they set in the mountains. A cool breeze came off the grasslands. I sipped a cup of tea, trying to figure out what was to come next.

The door signaled that I had a visitor. It was Annie, still in her gown. Her eyes were red; she’d been crying.

“Can I come in, Hare?”

“Of course.

I offered her tea or something stronger, but she declined both. She walked to the window and stared out into the moonlight.

“I’m sorry I ran,” she said.

“How long did you stay with him?”

“Not long. I thought he was something special. That turned out not to be true.”

“Ship was devastated,” I said. “She loved you very much. Still does, I think.”

“And you?”

“You remember, Annie. You and I were just kids then. I got over it.” I didn’t mention the long evenings I’d spent in Largo’s cargo hold, pounding on a punching bag and screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Graybill….”

“That’s your friend?”

“Yea. Hare, I have a control chip in my side.”

“What…?”

“Nausea. Bad, retching nausea. I only felt it once; that was enough. I did what he said after that.”

“The grays do that, don’t they? How long?”

“A little over a year.”

“The cops?”

“Right. Walk into a guard station and start vomiting. I wouldn’t last long enough to even begin to tell the story. Ship thinks she’s done me a favor, but I don’t know what to do. When he wakes up….”

“What’s the range on the chip?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out.”

“Ship and I have come a long way since you knew us,” I said. “You’ll need to trust us.”

“I wish I….”

The door chimed again. It was Bael.

“Hare….”

“Come in. Annie and I were just talking.”

Bael walked into the room, warily. Annie turned, and their eyes met. Neither said anything.

“This girl’s trouble.”

“Maybe, but we can handle it. And she’s more than a girl.”

“That’s unimportant. I don’t trust her. We have work to do. This whole adventure is spiraling downward.”

“No, it is not.” I heard a soft thud on the balustrade outside, and saw Ship’s golden eyes watching us.

She leapt from the balustrade and sauntered into the room. “Annie, we will take care of you.” Her voice still had a residual note of deep authority. “We will leave at dawn.”

“I think it’s time for a nice cup of tea,” I said, “before we all go to sleep.”

At dawn, three big camelopes were tied up outside the stable. Bael was already astride one, and Ship was perched in one on the saddlebags. The sun was just coming up, and the air was still cool, smelling of grass, smoke, and from somewhere, the scent of frying meat. “Where’s Annie?” I said.

“She’ll be along. There she is.”

She was running down from the hotel, dressed in traveler’s whites, clutching a satchel, one hand holding a large white hat. Behind her was the little tentacled keyboard player, trundling along on two of its tentacles, with three others holding a keyboard case carefully above its head. It wore a little white misting suit, required equipment for an amphibian in this clime.

“Just you,” Annie,” I said.

“Krelly comes or I don’t.”

“All right,” I sighed. “Put Krelly in one of your side bags.” A tentacle reached up and hauled the small figure up into the bag.

Riding a camelope is like learning a language. You can figure out pretty quickly the simple stuff, how to get them to move and stop, and how to change direction. Learning to ride them well, to get them to move from awkwardness to grace to a steady cadence, that takes long practice. But we knew enough to get where we were going. I would not have wanted to spend weeks on them.

The day grew hotter as we followed the trail that ran along the forest’s edge. We’d brought rudimentary cooling gear, and each of us had a parasol, so there we were, moving steadily across the grasslands, under our parasols. After an hour or so, we forded a small, shallow river that ran from the woods out into the grassland. On the banks was the small village of Yenbo, maybe fifty rammed-earth house surrounded by gardens. A few villagers looked up from their work. They waved, we waved, and we kept on.

About three hours in, Bael cried out, “Watchbird!” The big bird had appeared silently above us, flying in big swooping circles. Where it had come from, we couldn’t tell. As we watched another appeared, coming from the way we’d come. The two circled for a moment, then the first bird attacked. The two fought, diving and nipping at each other. Finally the first bird scored a major hit, tearing into the side of the other. The hurt bird fled. The first bird stayed with us for awhile, then flew off as well.

“We’re being watched,” I said, stating the obvious. Nobody said anything, and we kept on.

Mary Orit’s station stood on the edge of the forest, where the woods gave way to high grassland and scrub, a muted concerto of tans, browns, purple, and hints of gold. There was a sprawling main house, with a number of barns, storage sheds, and smaller houses. I could see a small power plant behind one of the barns, and a big water tank rose near the house.

Humans and a variety of other species were everywhere, building, repairing, tending animals, working in the extensive garden. A number of athletic-looking folks, both men and women, seemed to have nothing to do. They walked around, seemingly without a care, speaking occasionally to those who were working the place, blending into the tableaux. They seemed a solid and serviceable force.

When we arrived, we’d been taken around to a wide stretch of lawn behind the house. I recognized Orit. She’d been fighting, and was apparently just finishing a match with a man twice her size. She walked over to us, putting a damp towel around her neck. She moved firmly, quietly, like a big old cat.

“You don’t look like much,” the old woman said. “I don’t think I need you after all.”

“If that’s what you think, we can go back the way we came,” I replied. “But we keep the earnest money.”

Episode Six, in which Bael shows her staff and Annie almost blows up

Bael didn’t say anything, but walked over to a rack of wooden staves, each about two meters long. She looked at them for a moment, hefting several, then picked one. She balanced it in her hand, and twirled it over her head. She looked at Orit, bowed slightly, walked out onto the yard, and stood waiting. Orit watched her move. Finally, she picked out her own stave and followed the girl onto the grass. She too bowed slightly. Each brought up a stave to cross with the opponent’s, then pulled back.

“Whoa,” I said. “You two can have at it, but before you do, we have a little business. Do you have a healer in this place?”

“Yea. Emergency-trained, but extremely competent.”

“Surgery?”

“Some, mostly fractures, breaks, and the like.”

“How about removing a Torrin control chip?”

The old woman looked at me. “Those are rigged to explode when tampered with. How much time do we have?”

I looked at Annie. She looked afraid, but composed. Her little accompanist had slid one of its tentacles into her hand. “Maybe six hours at the outset.”

The old woman looked around at all of us, then fixed her eyes on Annie. “I will perform the work myself.”

“Wait a minute. We’re here to protect you, not put you in mortal danger.”

“Have you ever removed a control chip?”

“No,” I said.

“I have, a long time ago. I know how to defuse the chip.” She smiled at Annie. “You will be fine.” Then she looked at Bael. “We have five minutes. Show me what you can do.”

They started slowly, ritually. Bael struck first, and the old woman countered with a cross-move. This went on like a dance. I could see where Bael’s virtual control moves had come from. She had a master dancer’s grace. Whether or not she had a master’s skill with the stave I couldn’t tell.

Suddenly, the girl jammed her stave into the loose, sandy soil, let go, and rolled. She came to her feet close to Orit, retrieving her stave as it fell. She twisted and pulled it against Orit’s, but the old woman was ready. Holding her stave against Bael’s with one hand, she twisted and leaned in, knocking Bael off balance. Bael dropped, pulling the stave with her, spinning it around to again counter Orit’s as she dropped. She rolled onto her back and jammed her feet up against her own stave, pressing Orit off balance. Then Bael was up again, her stave pressing against Orit’s side, trapping the old woman. Bael touched the side of Orit’s neck with her own palm. “Kole,” the girl cried.

“Oya,” the old woman said. Bael released the stave and withdrew. She bowed slightly, turned and headed toward us, her eyes down. Then she looked up, and for an instant they met mine. She did not seem a prideful sort, nor the type to ask for approval. But there seemed to be a little bit of both of those things in her huge green eyes. Or maybe it was my imagination.

“Your father trained you well,” Orit said.

Bael froze. “What do you know of my father?”

Orit walked over to a shaded table with glasses and pitchers of water. She poured herself a glass and gestured to us to follow suit. I poured out a bowl for Ship.

“Did your father ever mention the old mater?”

“Yea, many times…. You’re the old mater? You can’t be. She was ancient when my father was young.”

“I’m a little older than I look. But it is hot and dusty here, and it’s time for my nap. We’ll talk later.”

“How did you know who she was?” I asked.

“My woman in Melinda has a lot more faith in your Mr. Eddie than I do. Of course I had you checked out. You’re in a lot of trouble.”

“We can handle the Bakka security,” I replied.

“Bakka security aren’t after you. Try the GFE. But as I said, we’ll have time to talk this evening. We have more urgent business to take care of.”

She gestured to a small round frenn who stood nearby. “Arrgin, would you please show our guests to their rooms? Dinner is at 8, and we leave tomorrow morning at dawn. And then show this young woman the way to the surgery.” She gestured to Annie. “I will be with you in a few minutes, after I’ve cleaned up.”

Annie was looking down at the ground, her hand tight around her companion’s tentacle.

“We’ll come with you,” I said. Bael nodded.

“That’s fine. It’s not far from the house.”

We all walked up a path to the big house, where Orit left us. The frenn, her thick red tail bobbing from right to left as she walked, led us up onto the wide porch, which was dotted with rocking chairs and couches and low tables. The big main room inside was similarly furnished, with a huge hearth at one end and a billiard table at the other. The frenn showed us the guest rooms in a side corridor, and then in her thick, almost unintelligible accent, told us to follow her to the healing house.

That house was a small building set amid a garden of flowering bushes and small trees. The flowers were of vivid orange. Orit was there already, standing next to a man in white clothes. She took Annie’s arm.

“Come in,” she said.

“Wait,” I said. I went up to Annie, and put my arms around her. Her face disappeared into my chest, and I could feel her tears. “You’ll be fine,” I whispered. “We’ll be right here.” I kissed her and let her go.

Orit led her into the building. Little Krelly started to follow, until Orit said no. “Go to the house,” she said. “There’s a bar in the main room where you can find drinks. We will join you in about one hour.”

We were all sitting on the porch, watching the grassland as the changing light and shifting winds swept across the surface. I’d made myself a martini, a classic drink from old earth, with some amazingly good gin. Krelly was softly playing a small stringed instrument I’d never seen before, occasionally letting go with a little cry. I figured that Orit knew what she was doing, but I still half expected an explosion from the surgery.

“What would you have done if there had been no competent healer here?” Bael asked.

“Ship?” I said.

“Largo’s launch is still at the Melinda spaceport. I’ve been in touch with her. When the grayling first appeared last evening, I jumped down and ever so slightly licked the back of his ankle. He didn’t feel it, so far as I could tell. My avatar’s saliva is a wondrous thing.”

“Poisons?” Bael asked.

“No, among other things, nanotransmitters. With the launch’s help, I was able to track the grayling back where he is apparently still sleeping. The launch is on standby, ready to lift and destroy the grayling’s house, if necessary.”

“Spaceport security….” I said.

“Will destroy the launch. Yea, I agree. But not before we’ve hit the grayling. At least that’s what I’m figuring.”

Just then we heard voices coming around the side of the porch. Orit and Annie. Both were smiling and talking animatedly.

“She’s fine,” Orit said. “Though her side will hurt a little. She was just telling me tales of her times on your Largo. Now we must eat.”

We were dining on Orit’s porch, around the side of the main house. Murphy’s Claim has a 26-hour day, roughly; though it was late, the sun had not yet set. The sky was a vivid purple, and the two small moons had just risen and were bathed in a pink glow.  The air had cooled a little, and a little breeze was coming across the grasslands.

We were alone on the porch. Orit had brought out the meal herself. It was simple but excellent: roast fowl, rice cooked in broth, and a salad of fresh garden vegetables. Big pitchers of lemonade stood on the table.

“The records are a little sketchy as to where you come from, Mr. Trieste. Can you fill us in?”

“I was born on the old terrestrial research station near the star that the r’ccula call the Killer’s Knife, ” I said. “My parents were both doing xenobio work on the organisms that live in the dust clouds out that way. Or so they said. They were also terry spies, trying to get a good picture of what the r’culla were up to. That was before the concordat, of course.”

“Are your parents still alive?”

“No,” I replied. That was an inventive variation on my standard story. With no finesse at all I changed the subject. “You mentioned the GFE as we were sitting down. Who are they?”

She looked at me, then at Bael and Ship.

“Goodies for Everybody?” I asked.

Then they all looked at me. “Sorry,” I said. “An old family joke.”

“The Galactic Force Extraordinaire,” she said.

“Sounds pretentious. I hate people who call themselves “galactic.” The galaxy is a very big place, and nobody I know has seen more than a bit of it.”

“It’s great to hear you pontificating again,” Ship said, “but now’s not the time. Who are these folks?”

“Well,” the old woman said, “Hare’s correct; the GFE has no shortage of arrogance. They’re essentially a loose group of mercenaries, with bases on a dozen worlds, but with one difference: they don’t always wait for business. If things are slow, they’ve been known to stir things up. And they’re very good at it.”

“And they’re after us?”

“That’s what I hear. My network suggests that they want something, possibly a document that they think you have.”

Ship cocked an eye in Bael’s direction, then looked over at me. “What do your sources say about how close they are? Do they know where we are?”

“No. As I understand it, they’re nosing around over near Binfal’s Star. But they’ll probably hear about you soon. Once you get me down to Melinda and onto my ship, I strongly suggest that you leave as well.”

She looked away, her attention suddenly elsewhere; something was coming in on her plant. Then she looked at us.

“The poachers are afoot tonight,” she said, “and we’re going hunting. I would like you like to come. We should be back well before it’s time to leave in the morning.”

Episode Seven, in which Ship catches up with the past and Hare and Bael fly blind

“If it’s alright with you,” Ship said, “I’ll stay behind.” She got up and sauntered over to where Annie was sitting, scratching her back on the leg of Annie’s chair. “Annie’s not going anywhere this evening,” Ship continued, “and she and I have a lot of catching up to do.” She looked up at Annie, and Annie smiled, a little weakly. “Annie, whatever happened back then, you’re still family. No hard feelings, little one.”

“Oh Ship, I haven’t been called that in a long time,” Annie said.

Bael and I said that we would come, and we were getting up to leave. But then it hit me.

“Wait, wait.” I said. “What did you do with the control chip?”

“Your hunch is correct,” Orit said. “The chip had a lot of extra stuff, including a removal notifier, which I disabled, and a locator signal, which I did not. Your grayling knows that Annie has been here, but now the chip is on its way to the Great Rift, on a high-speed skimmer, where it and an animal carcass will fall down a very deep hole. I also asked my old friend, the law over in McMurphy’s Folly, to detain your grayling for a few days. I expect that will be enough.”

Not long after, a dozen of us, humans and one block-like gramian, were gathered in a landsled hanger. The two skim sleds were big and old, but obviously serviceable. We were each handed a coverall and headgear. The coverall provided light-passthrough. Passthroughs have been around for a long time, but this set-up was smart: the passthrough shifted frequencies frequently, keeping in synch with the skim’s own invisibility technology, effectively rendering the sled and its occupants undetectable, even in the face of most attempts to crack the technology. The headgear stayed in synch with the passthrough as well, so that we could all see each other. The gear also gave us day for night. Any good plant gives enhanced night vision, but this viewer created a simulation of daylight in darkness, with a washed-out brightness that reminded me of afternoon light under the heavy cloud cover on the terraformed planet Vindaloo.

The team leader was a large, taciturn, efficient-looking man named Gamble. His head was shaved, with two prosthetic horns sprouting from his forehead. He was handing out stingshot rifles from a weapons safe that covered one wall of the shed. When he got to Bael and me, he hesitated, then looked at Orit. She nodded. Looking doubtful, he handed us each one of the weapons.

“You know how to shoot one of these?’

We both nodded. He moved on, then turned back. “Use short bursts, maybe one second. People keep their fingers on the control too long, and that’s just overkill. It’s a waste of the charge.” He fixed his eyes on us. “And don’t worry too much about accuracy. The field is wide, so pinpoint shots don’t matter; your next shot is more important than total accuracy with this one.”

“We’ll remember,” we both said, almost in unison.

“Who’s not here?” Gamble asked.

“I’m coming.” A small, well-muscled young man, almost a boy, came running into the shed, struggling at the same time to get into his coveralls.

“Teddy, next time I’ll dock you,” the leader said.

“I know, Mister Gamble. I’m trying to be on time.”

Gamble told us to pair up and check each other’s gear. That’s when I found out that Bael’s headpiece didn’t have a charge.

“We need a replacement headworks here,” I said. “No charge.”

One of Gamble’s helpers, a lean young girl with the intricate neck tattoos of Billow Station, ran out of the shed and came back with a new set.

Gamble gathered us around him. The long sunset was finally fading into dusk, and through the big hangar doorway I could see a line of vivid orange extending along the horizon, below the dark purple of a gathering dusk.

“We all know why we’re here, and what our mission is,” the big man said. “I’d wager that for most if not all of us, it’s the main reason we’re living at this station. Except of course for young Theodore; the main reason he has for living is to chase the blacksmith’s daughter.” He cocked an eye at the kid, who started. Everybody laughed. I noticed that the kid had been staring at Bael.

“I don’t need to remind you, but I need to say it anyway, and maybe our guests would like to hear it. On the surface, we’re going out to find cutter poachers. But if it were that simple, I doubt that many of you would be here tonight. No, we’re doing something a lot more critical to our own futures. We all love this world. We love its beauty; we love the craziness and toughness that you need to have to stay on the Claim. We love the sound of the tarren wind when it comes across the grass; we love the smell of the Berna forest after a summer rain. But we all know that our way of life on this little corner of this backwater system is at risk. Those poachers are a lot more than thieves, more than butchers. If they win, if they get to do what they want, if the Claim becomes identified across the Arm with something people want, and want bad enough to take it at all costs, then our way of life is finished here.”

Gamble’s soft voice began to get louder, deeper. “When we’re out on the lands, we’re fighting for the cutters, but we’re fighting for something more. We’re fighting for the Claim.” He paused and turned to look each of us in the eye. Then he shouted, “For the Claim!”

“For the Claim!” the group shouted back.

“For the Claim,” he said, softly again. “One more thing. Your stingshots are the best available. Your enemies won’t have as good. But they may have flashguns. We don’t use flashguns. Your suits will protect you up to a point against flash, but only up to a point, so watch yourselves. Now let’s get out there.”

We were an hour out from Orit’s station. The rich grasslands that abutted the woods at her place had given way to scrub, spreading out to the mountains. It all looked strangely colorless, whitewashed in the simulated daylight. Occasionally we would see three-horned long-legged ruminants, grazing in the scrub, in what was for them darkness. They would look up as we sped past, alert but unconcerned. I looked across at Bael; she was staring at her feet. She seemed in a trance, her gaze locked on something far, far away.

After awhile I stood and leaned out over the side of the sled. I shut my eyes to let them adjust to darkness. After a few moments I pulled off the headset. I enjoyed the feel of the wind in my face, and I loved the fact that without the headset, I could see nothing of my shielded companions, or the sled, or even myself. I felt like a disembodied form, skimming over the desert. Then I saw them. Lights in the distance, a lot of them. Sleds, and what might be a full encampment. I put the headset back on. Nothing, only the ongoing monotony of passing scrub. I peeled the headset off again.

“Ambush!” I said. “Gamble, pull off your headset. We’re being tricked.”

“What?”

“Do it,” Orit said, pulling hers off. “I can see the lights.”

Bael stood beside me. “Wait, I can see them with my gear. They’ve got three sleds, maybe twenty fighters. They’re headed this way.”

“You’ve got the only working set. Give it to Gamble, so he can drive this sled. Sled Two….”

The plant channel died.

“Gamble, where are you?”

I heard the sound of a flashgun discharging from close range, and something thudded near my feet. The gun began to power up again.

Without the headsets, none of us could see each other.

“Get your hoods off! Drop to the deck!”

Disembodied heads appeared from nowhere. I lifted the stingshot and sprayed the spaces above them. Something thudded on the other side of the sled. When I got there, the kid was already feeling for the hood and pulling it off.

“Son of a TFM,” somebody said. “It’s Johnson.”

Johnson was the station’s security chief.

“Is anyone from his crew here? Is anyone else missing?” I shouted.

The heads all looked around.

“No,” Orit said. She’d just pulled the hood off the body that had fallen next to me. It was Gamble, with most of his neck seared black. He was dead.

“Hare, the poacher sleds are halfway here,” Bael said. “And now I can see a flyer heading this way.”

I felt for the cloaked flashgun and found it close to Johnson’s inert frame. He was out for the duration. I cradled the weapon in my arm and felt for the fire button. But it might be too late. A searing beam of flame cut across our sled, and one of our crew cried out in pain and terror.

Episode Eight, in which our friends are on the run, and the earth moves

“We’ve got get you away,” I said to Orit.

“I’m not leaving,” she replied. “This is my team.”

“Madam,” I said, “we went out hunting poachers. This is a full-scale war. Your team’s not prepared for that. If we’re to protect you….”

“Go, granma.” It was Teddy, the kid. “We’ll fight better without having to worry about you. If you guys can find a place that’s more defendable, you can set up a fallback for us.”

“It looks like you’re a pretty important person in these parts,” I said, “and you’re more valuable alive and back at your station than you are fighting valiantly out here in the middle of nowhere.”

She looked at Bael and me, then she nodded. “Lay it on thick for a few minutes,” she said to Teddy. “Tie them down. We’ll head out then.”

I handed the kid the flashgun, and picked up a stingshot. Bael, Orit, and I put our hoods back on and changed the passthrough frequency. We would be as invisible as possible, to the enemy and to ourselves; our headsets weren’t worth a damn, except for Bael’s. She would lead. We crouched in the grass, alongside the sled.

Three new sleds were coming in close, laying down a steady stream of flashgun bursts, well more than any poachers would have been able to muster. The stingshots would never be able to match that. Then I saw a few of the heads bobbing around the front of our sled. A tarp was pulled off, and I could see a small distorter.

“Jo,” the kid shouted. “You’re on it. You’re the best we’ve got. Fire when ready. The rest of you, behind the bulkhead.”

A head bobbed toward the distorter, and within seconds was sending out distortion pulses toward the first sled. The stream intensified, and it felt like the night was on fire.

“We go now,” Bael said. “Can you see my arm?”

She had hiked up one sleeve of the coverall.

“Yea,” we said.

“OK. Follow the arm.”

The forearm began to move, a white streak in the night vision. We followed. I amped my adrenaline flow, but not too much. I did not want to be a wad of jitters.

Behind us the scene was a lit with fire and flashguns. But we had no time to watch, we were running too hard.

“Any idea where we are going?” Bael asked.

“I did a quick check on the survey maps. They were in that data dump you gave me on the maglev. There’s a ruin, probably pre-human, about 600 meters from here, 10 degrees left.”

Bael shifted course slightly, and we kept running. Soon I could make out the ruins, no more than a maze of stone walls, and most of those were tumbling down. Most settled planets in human space show traces that someone else has been there, come and gone a thousand years before, a million years before.

“Look for an internal corridor,” I said. Passthrough does a pretty good job of hiding body heat when one is moving. But stationary, a suit can only mask and divert the heat up to a point. I was hoping that the walls, re-radiating the day’s heat, would mask our thermal trace. We tumbled into a long corridor, and sat down on the dirt floor, breathing hard.

“I feel like I can’t do anything. I can’t event cast illusions,” Mary Orit said. “I’m calling Teddy.”

“Is your channel secure? Can you even access it?”

“I think so.”

“Put us on it.”

An explosion lit up the sky, with a big fireball rising above the place where we had been.

“That’s not a sled,” Bael said. “Too big a burst. I hope it was the flyer.”

“Teddy, can you connect?”

Static.

“Teddy, connect.”

“Here, gran.” The voice was faint.

“Status?”

“We got their flyer. It’s pretty much a stalemate, nobody can move. Jyyn and Telly are hurt bad. Sled Two is down, but everybody made it over. I gotta go.”

“Good boy,” she said. Her voice quavered slightly.

We lay in the dust, quiet, listening to the sounds of the night. To the far north, lightning lit up the sky.

It took me awhile to feel it in the ground: a dull vibration, at first the faintest of traces, but steadily growing stronger. I could tell from Orit’s breathing that she had felt it first, and had been trying to figure it out.

“Stampede,” she said. “Must be lightning fires. Heading this way, maybe 20 minutes out.”

“What’s stampeding?”

“Hysk beasts, native to these plains. Two meters high at the shoulder, big antlers, running at, I’d guess, 25 kph.”

“How safe are we?”

“My guess is that these structures are big enough to divert them. At least I hope so. It’s my crew I’m worried about.”

“This might be a blessing. Can you raise Teddy?”

She got through to the kid.

“Status, Teddy.”

“The stalemate is holding, gran. They’ve got us boxed in, or nearly so, but they can’t get any closer than they are. Same for us. Everybody’s just lying low, exchanging shots, waiting for something to break.”

“Teddy,” I said. “Can you feel the stampede?”

“Yea, but it’s the least of our worries.”

“It may be a lot more than that. Your granma sees it hitting you in maybe 15 minutes, coming in from the northeast. What do you have in that direction?”

“One of the sleds is roughly due east, the other’s on the west.”

“That’s our direction. They may not know what’s coming, or even if they do, they may make a run for it. They don’t have the firepower to stop it. Here’s what I want you to do.”

We laid out the plan, such as it was. The kid liked it.

We moved to the remains of a room that was on the leeward side of the ruins, away from the coming storm. Then we waited.

The earth shakes got deeper, and we could begin to hear them coming, a low dull sound, like groundcar traffic somewhere far away, but getting closer.

“Gran, we’ve got about two minutes. They all know something’s coming; they’re moving around. It looks as though they are about to flee.”

“Hold steady, Teddy. Move when you can see the dust.”

“I see it gran! Here we go.”

I could only imagine what was happening. The plan was simple. Rather than trying to outrun the onslaught and face the western sled, Teddy’s sled was to rise as high as it could and dash full bore into the stampede, distorter on max. The pulses would hopefully divert the hysk around the oncoming sled, and the hysk would catch the eastern sled in disarray. The western sled was another matter. My hope was that our sled would disappear in the swirl of dust and maddened running hysk. In any case, unless they were very well trained, the crew of both sleds would have more than us on their minds.

So we waited. Silence from Teddy.

Then it came. The dull sound increased to a roar, and then a louder roar. The earth felt like it had turned to water, choppy water at that. Dust was everywhere, thick and getting thicker. The roar was deafening, and the earth heaved. A piece of wall tumbled down, not far away. Bael was to my right. I felt her arm around my waist. I put mine around hers, and squeezed. I put my other hand on Orit’s shoulder and did the same. We lay there as the chaos surged around us.

Episode Nine, in which Hare and Bael go to jail, and neither is anywhere to be seen

Blackness. And the feeling that I’d slept for days. I felt around me. I was lying on a thin pallet on a cold stone floor.

“Welcome back,” Bael said.

“Where are we? How long have I been out? We were just out in a hysk stampede.”

“Don’t know where; I just came to maybe an hour ago. My chron says that it’s been more than a day since we were attacked. If I had to guess, I’d figure our friends had another flyer, found us, and took advantage of the stampede to fly over and gas us. But that’s only a guess.”

We’d lost our passthrough suits, but it was still too dark to see each other, even with the plant. All we could sense were each other’s dim, shimmering body heat shadows.

“Ship?” I signaled.

“I already tried that. There’s a block on all plant channels going out.”

“Any sign of Orit?”

“I tried all of my channels. Nothing.”

“Let’s keep talking, give them something to listen to.”

“Have you looked around?

“Of course. We’re in a sealed stone room, with no openings except for a small air vent.”

“Well, they’re not too smart, or maybe just overconfident, or maybe just both,” I said.

“How so?”

“They put the two of us together. Not a good idea.”

“Where’s the vent?”

“Over your head, then a meter to your left. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, princess, I really do not know.”

I found the vent, about ten centimeters in diameter, with a steady stream of air coming in. I wondered where the outflow was.

We sat in the dark without saying anything, watching each other’s dim heat glow. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed as if she might have been crying a little.

“Are you close to your father?” I asked.

“As close as anyone can be to someone who’s trying to run a whole planet.” She fell silent for a few minutes. I didn’t say anything. “We were closer when I was younger, before he took on all that work. My mother had died, and he would take me out everyday, riding, exploring the woods, going on visits to the city. We would go see some of the most wonderful people.”

“What sort of people?”

“My father’s friends. Once we went to visit a very old woman, a human. She had played piano in the main orchestra on the Ocean Colony. She’d won all sorts of awards, and she lived in a beautiful little house at the end of a narrow alley, filled with tiny porcelain cats. She became my music teacher for several years until she died. She was strict, but very sweet. I miss her.”

More silence.

“There were all sorts of people. One was, what do you call it in the old tongue? A confidence man? Smith was one of my father’s oldest friends. He was a dapper man, always well dressed, and he didn’t seem the least bit shady. He knew how to get what he wanted, though, and I believe my father employed him sometimes. They would go into another room to talk, and I would read until they came back. Then he would teach me a trick.”

“A trick?”

“Sometimes card tricks, sometimes magic tricks. And sometimes he would teach me how to get people to trust you and tell you stuff. I still remember some of that.”

A stick fighter and a budding con woman. She’d been well raised.

“Your father must have trusted you a lot, to let a little girl learn stuff like that.”

“He knew I’d never break the Code.”

I never did get around to asking her what the Code was, at least not then, but we talked for a long time about the people she’d met when she was a little girl. Talking seemed to relax her.

After a while I stood and stretched and walked over to the vent. I put my face to it. Cool, dry air, no smells. But then, I suddenly caught a faint scent, a little like gardenia, and then….

“I couldn’t help noticing your scent, countess. It’s lovely. Do you happen to have any with you?”

“Yea, a little vial in my belt. Why?”

“Give it to me, and make ready to move when you see me do so. I have a feeling that we are about to get a visit.”

I took her hand. She slipped me the little proxine vial as the room was flooded with light. I brought my pupils down instantly; I could see that she was doing the same thing. A sharp noise, then part of one wall disappeared. The walking stick strode in, followed by our waiter, the tonsured shroll, and two beefy human guards, each sporting a gigantic sharp-focus flashgun, pointed at us.

The stick was a little over a meter tall, with thin, bright-green fibrous limbs. Each limb terminated in long thin fronds. As I learned much later, painfully, the fronds could stiffen into something resembling fingers or claws, as the need arose. The central stalk ended in a knob; there was nothing that I could identify as a face. A small voice box was strapped to the side of the stalk.

“Where’s Orit?” I asked.

The stick stopped. To the extent that it could “look” at anything, I figured it was looking me up and down.

“Orit is fine, though a little sedated,” the box finally spoke in a stiff, clipped tone. “She’s of most use to us in good health. As are you, I might add, so don’t try any bold escape moves. I know you must be thinking of something right now: ‘rush the guards,’ or some such thing. It won’t work, I can tell you that now. There are four more guards out in the passage.”

“What do you want with us?”

“With you, nothing. In a few hours I’ll have you in orbit, ready to hand over to those GFE boys. They’re on their way over from Binfal’s Star as we speak. I expect them to make planetfall by the day after tomorrow. You’re worth a good bit of lucrum, you know.”

“What do you want with Orit? You don’t look like the type who’d be involved in animal poaching.”

“Who told you we’re in animal poaching? Oh, yes, that story about the cutters. Well, we’re fine with the poachers taking a few cutters, and the poaching clans have proven most useful over time. But there’s something much bigger happening on this planet. However, that’s nothing for you to know.”

“Oh come on. You’ve got us going to what is almost certain death, and you can’t give us the punch line?”

“Punch line? I don’t understand.”

“The whole story, the big deal. Why you’re here in the first place. I need to know.”

The stick paused for a moment. I could feel something scanning me, but I have shielding against telepathic incursions. I only hoped that Bael had something similar.

“Have you ever heard of Ponce de Leon?”

“No,” I said.

“Humans are so ignorant. He was one of yours, a human explorer from many centuries ago. He was said to be looking for a fountain of youth.”

“A fountain of youth?”

“A source of rejuvenation, of exceptionally long life, something without the pains and problems of your rejuvenation treatments. It’s what all of the humanoid races long for.”

“So?”

“This planet is a fountain of youth.”

“How so?”

“That’s all I’m…”

“Hit the guy on the left. Now!”

Both of the guards had relaxed slightly and lost their focus, with the weapons pointing upward. I sprung for the one on the right. I could see Bael moving in the same arc, her left foot aiming for the guard’s stomach. I head-butted mine in the nose, then kicked the inside of one leg, hard, and knocked him aside. He reeled back. I hit him again, and he fell. Then I spun to my left and sprayed the shroll’s face with the perfume. Shrolls live by and for smell; this concentration was an overload, like a flash of blinding light for a human. The big blue shape staggered and shrieked and fell to the floor. I grabbed the flashgun. It was heavy enough to have a full second charge. These guys didn’t kid around.

Bael had her opponent on the floor, grabbing his side and retching. She turned and faced the stick, who was making for the corridor in a jerky almost-run. I fired. Pieces of rock showered from the far wall, but the stick disappeared.

Bael picked up the other gun. I looked out; the corridor seemed clear. We carefully stuck our heads out and saw nothing. We headed after the stick, who was rounding a corner. I got to the spot and was following when a flash shot hit the wall next to my head. I grabbed Bael and pulled her back, then reached out and fired a couple of bursts blindly down the corridor.

“The other way?”

“Sure.”

Suddenly a hand grabbed the back of my collar and lifted me in the air. I looked at Bael; a big blue paw was doing the same thing to her.

“Idon’tknowwhyIshouldhelpyouallthingsconsidered,” the shroll said. “Butwegottagetyououttahere.”

Episode Ten, in which Orit casts illusions, and Ship comes on like Puss in Boots

The shroll carried us at a run, each of us tucked under an arm. I didn’t struggle, nor did Bael. We both figured that we were somehow safer than we would be on our feet. Besides, when a shroll has you in its grip, there’s not much to be done, except perhaps to try to kill it. And that didn’t seem like a good idea.

The big beast ran faster than I’ve ever seen one of these shambling creatures move. We headed down a blackened corridor, toward what appears to be a dead end, a solid face of rock.

What’s this character up to?

I have no idea. But I have a feeling it knows what it’s doing.

BequietIneedtofocus!

So much for secure plant channels.

We ran for the rock wall, picking up speed.

And it dissolved as we hit it, only to reform once we were through.

We found ourselves in what appeared to be a laboratory, with white tile walls, brightly lit. Windows looked into large rooms filled with medical equipment. Side passages ran off the main corridor. The whole place was deserted. The shroll ran on, then suddenly stopped and let us down.

Bequietanddon’tmove.

What’s going….

Suddenly we heard a scream, a scream of deep pain and fear, coming from down the corridor.

It’sOritdonotmove.

The shroll held up its paw, gestured left, and flattened itself, as much as any shroll can, along the left side of the corridor. We did the same. The shroll moved forward silently, then maybe three meters short of the door to the room, we stopped. The shroll gestured, and the image of two large men, heavily armed, appeared in the corridor, beyond the door. One made a loud clattering noise.

Three guards rushed from the room, weapons at ready. One fired at the holos. The shroll grabbed two of the guards from behind and slammed their heads together. Both dropped. The third whirled. I moved to intercept, but Bael was faster, her left foot intersecting hard with the guy’s ear. He staggered, and the shroll scooped him up, grabbing the man’s fallen weapon, a small Baltasrin-issue flasher, from the looks of it. I got a pungent whiff of wet mud, skunk, and sweet Amatin roses. Shroll adrenaline smells.

With the guard held out front like a shield, the shroll entered the room. Two men and a bullslinger, all dressed in white uniforms, looked up at us from the table where Orit lay. The bullslinger reached out with one of its long curving arms for a narrow tube on another table.

Flash grenade. Close your eyes, I said.

I reached for the grenade hanging from the guard’s belt, pulled it, flicked the activation switch, and heaved it toward the table. I could see the light, even from behind closed and enhanced eyelids. I opened my eyes to see the hapless guard flying through the air toward the staggering bullslinger, who was wildly firing heat bursts from the tube, searing bits of the ceiling. The guard hit the bullslinger dead on. I was right behind, grabbing for the tube. Somewhere behind me, the shroll fired short stun bursts at the guys in the white coats, as the girl headed for the table. I had the tube and poked the bullslinger in its eye, which effectively brought it down.

Orit lay strapped to the table, moaning.

It’s not Orit, Bael said.

What?

Look away, visualize anything, a tree in a field, anything. Focus on it, then look back quickly.

She was right. The image of the old woman flickered, and in its place, I could see a man, very well dressed, also moaning in pain. Her image reasserted itself, but the more I focused, the more I could see the man. His carefully crafted suit suggested authority.

Castingillusions?

Yea. I assume Orit did this, She’s good.

The guards both had restraints, and we were just about finished trussing up the whole gang when we heard an explosion. It came from up the maze of corridors beyond.

The hall ended in a T. Around one corner and then another, two more guards lay unconscious, both stripped of their weapons, and one without armor. A spent percussion grenade lay on the floor.

Another, larger explosion, this time closer. At the end was a stair, and on the wall a circle containing an inverted V had been scrawled.

My father’s sign. Come on.

We climbed three flights. At the top the big steel door was ajar. It looked as though the lock had been blown off. Outside was a large rooftop, and the air hit us, hot and sticky. We were in the hills above Melinda. The grass fires were still burning off to the left, with big orchards spreading to the right.

“What kept you?” Orit appeared from behind a parapet. The roof around her was littered collected stunners and grenade belts. “How is that poor man?” she asked.

“OK,” I said. “In pain, but he’ll be all right.” I did not tell her that they’d just begun to pull out the fellow’s fingernails.

“How did you get away?” Bael asked.

“Illusions are powerful things. Hello Kral.”

“Hellomaterwehavewalkingstickontherun.”

“Well, I wish we had been able to do things a little differently. But this will do. We still need to catch him.”

Down below was a strange sight. Roughly fifteen figures, all male, all human, were all hopping feverishly on one leg.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up,” she said. “And I can’t control the people pursuing you.”

“We can stop the ones heading this way,” I said. “We can also fire on the guys down below.”

“Do you have enough stun charge?”

“No, but….”

“No more violence,” she said. “We need to do this without more people getting hurt.”

Just then we heard steps on the stair. With a loud “bam,” the steel door blew off its hinges. We all dropped behind the parapet, except for the shroll. Moving quickly, the big blue furball ran to the back of the sloping stair housing and began to climb.

A flashgun burst spewed wildly through the open doorway, then nothing. Bael and I fingered the stunners we’d grabbed from Orit. We held our fire. Orit crouched at the roof’s edge, focusing on the tableaux below. Bael and I looked at each other, waiting while the shroll held onto the sloping roof of the stairwell, a flash grenade in one paw, a stunner in the other.

“It looks like we have a little help,” Orit said. I quickly glanced her way, keeping most of my attention on the door. “The cavalry has arrived.”

I edged across the little stretch of roof. Coming across the burning grassland was a large skimmer sled, loaded with fiercely determined people. In the bow, holding onto a small mast, stood a large, horned cat.

“Hello, Ship.”

“What’s the status?”

“We’re on the roof. The hopping people in front of you need to be rounded up quickly,” Bael said. “Don’t know who else is in the building, except that we have people on the stairs below, ready to attack.”

The sled’s fighters fanned out as the hopping men all fell to the ground, exhausted. Orit reeled back, as if she had just dropped a very heavy load. Then she gathered herself and began to focus on the space in front of the doorway. Suddenly two huge Strugla warriors appeared in front of us. Each was wearing full battle armor, with the obligatory horned helmet. Each carried a huge flashgun, along with an assortment of knives and other weapons. They made for the doorway, as a steady stream a flashgun fire came from below. But nothing could stop our two massive champions. The armor absorbed the flash fire, and they started down the stairs. We could hear the people below retreating.

These weren’t just holos. These were full illusions. Even the flashguns appeared to send out fire.

“Nice,” I said.

“I can keep it going for a little while,” Orit replied. “But only a little while.”

A little while was all it took. After the round-up below, our people stormed the place with almost no resistance. They cornered our friends below, and then swept the building. Walking stick was nowhere to be found.

It was good to see Ship.

“How did you find us?” I asked.

“Ask the kid.”

Teddy appeared behind her, grinning, and looking a little older than he had a couple of nights before.

“We guessed that you’d be somewhere close to Melinda, so we’ve been prowling around. When Gran got out in the open air out of the building, her locator pulse must have re-engaged. We got her signal, and here we are.”

“Teddy, what of the crew…?” Orit asked.

“We all made it back, Gran. Jyyn and Telly got hurt pretty bad, but they’re healing well. They’ll be OK. And we rounded up a big group of the poachers.”

Orit gave us the address of a little inn in Melinda where she kept a permanent room.

“Go,” she said. “Rest, get cleaned up, have something to eat. We will meet later this evening, at the House of the Eager Dog.”

Episode Eleven, in which Krelly plays up a storm and Bael nods her approval

On a Melinda back street, we heard loud popping explosions from just behind us, and then a horde of little Turing elves, dressed up as fat little javelinas, came running between our legs, chortling uproariously. It was carnival time in Melinda, and the nighttime streets were packed with costumed revelers. Fireworks and street musicians were everywhere, alongside food vendors hustling delicacies on sticks. Even the bindlestiffs were getting into the act.

Somebody dressed as a black and white glowing skeleton bumped into me and then disappeared into the crowd.

“Tracking bug,” Ship said.

“Thanks. Maybe I should keep it and we can send a backtrack.”

“No time.”

“Then wipe it please. Stay on your toes, everyone. We are being watched.”

We found our way down a narrow alley to the House of the Eager Dog, where we were to meet Orit and the rest.

The Dog was a big subterranean place, packed to the rafters with revelers. The woman in charge, a huge figure dressed in skin-tight green leathers, nodded when I mentioned Orit and took us to a room in the back. Temperatures in Melinda can drop at night, and a big fire was blazing in the hearth. Everybody was there, Orit, Teddy, the shroll, and Annie and her companion. Little Krelly was draped on the arm of Annie’s chair, slurping spiced pomegranate juice and cooing softly. After we had our drinks, Orit spoke.

“We have most of them rounded up.” she said. “And when the planetary federals got inside and saw the whole setup, they found enough evidence to put away the whole gang.”

“Exceptforwalkingstick,” the shroll said.

“Don’t worry, Kral,” Orit replied. “We’ll get walking stick. I’m pleased that we have enough dope on those two guys over on Malfi, that now I don’t need to go.”

“What is your name, exactly?” I asked the shroll. “Eddie called you something different from what Mary Orit does.”

“SmellsLikeWetLeavesismypublicnametranslatedintointerstellarpatois.” The shroll paused for a moment. “Myritualnameiskral’na’paik.” The second syllable of his name was accompanied by a guttural honking, with a little spitting. “PleasecallmeKral.

I looked at Orit. “I’ve been wanting to ask you. The bodyguard thing was a ruse, was it not?”

“As you could see, I was having trouble with my security. With Johnson caught and his confederates identified, I think that we’ve solved that. But yes, it was a ruse. When I heard that my gooddaughter had landed in the company of a couple of adventurers, I figured this was the best way. The Duke’s family lore suggested that I had disappeared a long time ago, and I figured that some incentive would be needed to get you all out to my station. I still intend to pay you, of course.”

“No,” I said. “I think….”

“Yea,” Ship cut in. “We would be honored to accept payment.”

“Hare, do not say another word.”

“I would be honored as well. Where are you off to next?” Orit asked.

“I guess that we need to go find Linda Aphrodite Jones,” I said. I grinned at Bael.

“Oh my,” Orit said. She stood and walked behind Bael’s chair, putting her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “You haven’t heard the news.” She looked at me over Bael’s head. “Reports came in this afternoon. Jones is dead.” Bael stiffened.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Her flyer was fished out of the waters just off Government House on Forest. The flyer was covered with a fair amount of her blood. Traffic records show another flyer matching hers in the moments before the crash. That’s most of what they have. They haven’t recovered the body.”

“They won’t,” Annie spoke up. She had that stone-faced look she’d had when I first rejoined Largo. “My aunt is not dead.”

“Honey….”

“My aunt will die in her bed as a very old woman. She will not die for no reason at all. That already happened to her sister, my mother. My aunt will not allow a senseless death.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Orit said, “from what I remember of the old days. I’ve never met anybody who was tougher than she was.”

“Well, I suppose that’s what’s next,” I said. “Not just find Jones, but find out if she’s alive.”

“She’s alive.”

“Are you coming with us?” I asked Annie. “We can at least get you off-world.”

“That’s a welcoming invitation,” she said. “I don’t have much choice.”

“Annie,” Ship said, “you know what we talked about. I want to continue that.”

“Go, Annie,” Orit said. “I will keep an eye on your grayman, and remember that the Claim is here for you.”

“All right.”

“I have a question,” I said. The walking stick said something about a fountain of youth on the Claim. What do you know about that?”

Orit locked eyes with mine. “There is no fountain of youth,” she said, and then she paused for what seemed like a long time. “Something in the Claim’s Gaia—at least the portions of the original Gaia that survived terraforming—has a salutary effect on human systems. The cutter adrenalin is just one example.”

“How come this isn’t common knowledge. I would think that….”

“We are working very hard to keep it from becoming common knowledge. Otherwise, we will lose the Claim.”

“Have you isolated…?

“We’ve isolated nothing. But that’s all I can tell you; that’s most of what we know. To change the subject, I have one request.”

“And?”

“I want you to accept the services of Kral for the time being, to accompany you on your quest.”

“What do think, Ship?”

“RememberthatIcrackedyourcomchannel,” Kral said. “Iwon’tbearoundmuchuntil youneedme.Iexpecttohibernateonceweareonyourship.”

Ship nodded, Annie nodded.

“OK,” I said. “Until we find the Duke.”

Suddenly there was a commotion from the tavern outside our door, interspersed with bursts of loud music. We open the doors. Krelly had slipped out and was the center of a large crowd. The little character was playing a keyboard fiercely, playing what appeared to be a mash of Beethoven, Jelly Roll Morton, and Burr, the music sensation from a century ago. Much of the room had gathered around. Annie made her way through the crowd, let down her cascades of blond tresses, and began to sing.

She sang well, with vigor at times, with a soft gentleness at others, through a wide range of music. The crowd loved her.

When it was over, and Krelly was folding up his keyboard, Annie ran up to us, smiling, breathless. “Ship!” she said. “I’m staying. I have a job, singing here. And the Dog is part of the Burnt Grasses Clan. The grays can’t touch me.”

I looked around. A lot of quiet nodding was going on. I could see Orit exchange a knowing look with the big woman in the green leathers. And I caught Bael giving Ship a quick glance of undisguised relief. Seemed like everyone was happy.

“Damn,” Orit said. “The GFE people have landed early. They are arriving at the spaceport now.”

“This is good-bye, then,” Ship said. “We need to move.”

“I have a litter waiting in the back,” Orit said.

“A flyer?” I asked.

“Rooftop only. I have a special permit.”

We hugged all around. When I came to Annie, she put her arms around my waist, pulled me close, and kissed me. We held the kiss, and then she whispered in my ear,  “I would have loved to go back to the stars with you. But this is a better way. I’ll always love you, Hare.”

“We need to go!” Bael said.

We piled into the litter and told the automaton driver to go to sector B of the spaceport, and to stay away from the incoming terminal. We flew through the night, skimming across the city’s rooftops, the streets below crowded with revelers, fireworks exploding occasionally outside the litter. Soon the spaceport’s the bright towers came into view. Suddenly the litter began to weave and buckle. The automaton had frozen, evidently on shutdown. We were moving fast, heading toward a collision with the spaceport’s outer wall.

Episode Twelve, in which our crew gets arrested, Ship gets back together with herself, and Hare finds his clothes

“The controls are locked! I can’t get in. Nothing.”

“Hare, get back in your restraint. Now!”

Bael hit the release knobs on the four port mooring-shooters. The self-guiding hooks shot out and fixed themselves on the nearest upright, the pole for a huge “Welcome to McMurphy’s Claim” sign. We veered left, skirting the wall, and found ourselves flying in circles, ten meters above the ground, just missing the bottom of the sign each time we passed it.

“Is everyone OK?” I asked.

“Quickthinking,” Kral said. “MaryOritwasrightaboutyou.”

“Yea,” I agreed. “We all owe you one.”

“Are you keeping count?”

“Enough, you two,” Ship said. “We’ve got to get off this thing and into the port. Assuming that driver system failure was not an accident, that may be more difficult than it sounds.”

“If we activate the starboard mooring-shooters and they catch something, that should cause an override and cut the thrusters,” I said.

Nobody could think of anything better. I was on that side, so I waited until we were coming around near the wall and then pounded the release knobs. The hooks sailed out and grabbed the wall. The flyer jerked to a stop. Even in the restraints, the deceleration was fierce. But we had stopped, hanging between the pole and the wall.

“Again, is everyone OK?”

They all were freeing themselves from the restraints, and each made noises of assent.

“Can we all make it hand-over-hand to the wall?” Ship asked.

“Can you, with those paws?” I asked.

Ship shot out her knife claws.

“Oh yeah, of course.”

She went first, followed by Annie. The shroll went over nimbly with arms and legs across the mooring wire. That left me. Raw height was not my favorite thing in those days, but I could do it. I thought about trying to burn the flyer to confuse things; I’d snagged a couple of flash grenades from the afternoon’s adventure. But litters of that sort are famously hard to burn, and I had no idea how sentient the automaton was. So I let it go and headed up the mooring wire.

We were gathering on the spaceport wall when the commotion descended: a couple of large flyers and several sleds all rushed up to us. We were bathed in floodlights and peeper rays.

“Melinda Port Security!” a loud voice proclaimed.

“Don’t resist. Do exactly as you are told.” It was Orit.

“What’s going on?”

“You’re to be interned, and Largo will be taken to an impound yard on one of our moons. Sort of.”

“How long before we can get away?”

“Maybe a day. We need to cover your tracks and make your system departure invisible.”

So it went. We never saw Orit, but our processing was efficient, impersonal, and reasonably gentle. In the small hours of the morning, we were quietly led from a holding cell to a small lift bay. On the way I contacted Orit one more time.

“Hello Mary.”

“Hello Hare. We have Largo prepared for a silent jump when you’re all aboard. Ship and I have been working well together.”

“Do you have an idea as to what happened with the litter?”

“No. Somebody got remote access, obviously, overloaded the automaton, and jammed the controls. The work was very good.”

“And who?”

“No idea. You were being tracked, despite our best efforts. Could have been the grays, could have been GFE friends locally. Don’t know.”

“Let us know if you uncover anything.”

“I will. We’ll keep investigating. What’s important now is to get you away.”

It was good to get back aboard Largo. We’d already done a detritus scrub at the port, and we were leaving the entry chamber when Ship came over to both Bael and me, rubbing her back on our legs. Then she disappeared.

“Ahhh,” she said. “That feels wonderful. You have no idea how exhausting it is to be two places at the same time.” She was back aboard, in one piece.

We gathered on the bridge, Bael, Kral, and me. Ship spoke. “Where to?”

“My aunt has a home on Ginga, and that’s not common knowledge,” Bael said. “If she’s on the run, I’m guessing that’s where she’s headed.”

“So we’re off to Ginga?”

“Ginga’s in the Nestor system. That system has a gas giant, and that planet has a pretty good-sized moon. There’s a colony there, where my aunt’s oldest friend lives. If anyone would know what’s going on, he will. He’s a very smart man.”

“I’ve heard of that colony,” I said. “What do that locals call it?”

“Ice,” she said. “It has an official name, but everybody just calls it Ice.”

“Well,” Ship said, “it looks like we’re off to see the Wizard.”

“What’s a wizard?” I said.

Later, Kral had gone off to hibernate, and Ship had put herself on standby. The lights were dimmed, and if night can ever really happen on a spaceship, this was it. I wandered into the little bar alcove off the salon. I found a bottle of Fragon brandy behind the bar. It was already opened; I poured myself a glass and sat there in the near dark.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Sure, princess.”

“Cut out the princess stuff. “My name’s Bael.”

“OK, Bael.”

She poured herself a glass of the deep brown liquid and sat on a stool next to mine.

“You can have your old rooms back,” she said.

I looked at her, sitting there in the near dark. She wasn’t looking my way; her huge green eyes were staring at something far away. Her profile was lovely.

“No, Bael, you’ve earned those rooms. They’re yours. Besides, I like my little room. It was designed to be cozy, and it is.”

“Are you sure…?”

“Of course. And if I wasn’t, Ship would have some very choice things to say to me.”

“But I would like to get back the big green pillow,” I continued.

“Not that one!” she said. “That’s my favorite.” She smiled a little smile. “Well, OK. You can have it back.”

“And I would like to get my clothes.”

“Oh, that’s simple. They’re all boxed up in the starboard storage locker on the subdeck. Ship made sure that happened.”

“Thanks.”

“Except for your vest.”

“What vest?”

A pause.

“The black one with the gold trim. I sort of…borrowed it. And then I sort of…altered it.”

I considered that for a moment. “I’m thinking it must look a lot better on you than it ever did on me,” I said. “Keep it.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then she smiled and took a sip of brandy.

End of Part One

To Be Continued in Part Two, “Escapades on Ice.”