"Mmm? Oh—yes, Captain. Although right now I just want to get these things installed and running." Everyone chuckled; Heris grinned. Better and better. She noticed that Koutsoudas managed to keep a hand or his head between the watchers and what he was actually doing, most of the time. Then his scan lit, obviously sharper than the ones on either side.
"How'd you do that?" one of the youngest techs asked.
"Don't ask," Koutsoudas said. His fingers danced across the plain surfaces of his add-ons. Heris never had figured out how he operated them. His display changed color slightly, showing the departing Despite in a vivid arc of color that zoomed suddenly closer. Heris flinched, even though she knew it was Koutsoudas, and not the patrol craft. Along one side of the display, three sets of numbers scrolled past. "There—eighty-seven percent of her maximum acceleration, but she's got a bobble in the insystem drive. Sloppy . . . it's cutting their output. Weapons still cold. That's odd. Shields . . . there goes the pre-jump shield check."
"I never believed it," said someone at the margin of Weapons. "I heard about him but I didn't believe—"
"It's impossible," said someone else.
"Cut the chatter." That was the grizzled senior chief poised behind Koutsoudas's shoulder, absorbing what he could.
"Send a tightbeam," Koutsoudas said, and gave the vector. Showoff, Heris thought. Worth it, in what he could do for you, but a showoff all the same.
"There they are." Now his display zoomed to another vector, where three . . . five . . . seven . . . scarlet dots burned. "Tag 'em—" Beside each one, a code appeared.
"Range?" Heris asked. She leaned forward, as if she could pry more information out of the display. Numbers flickered along both edges of the screen.
"They're in the cone," Koutsoudas said, answering her next question first. "They'll get whatever Despite sent—and the range is still affected by downjump turbulence. I won't have it to any precision for an hour, Captain."
"Three to four hours for me, Captain," said the scan-second promptly.
"But they're at the system edge," Koutsoudas said. "It's a cautious approach—very cautious. They won't spot us for another several hours at least, even with boosted long scan; they're blinded by their own downjump turbulence."
"What's Despite doing?"
"Running fast," Koutsoudas said, flicking back over that ship's departing signature. "Considering scan lag, I'll bet she's already gone into jump."
Cecelia arrived at the shuttle port in a foul temper. It had taken forever to get a groundcar out to Marcia's place, and she hadn't been about to take any favors from Marcia. Not after that insult—as if she had ever failed to pay her bills! So she had endured a long, bumpy, dusty trip in to the shuttle port. Traffic crowded the road going the other way. It must be some local holiday, with early closing. But once in town, clogged streets delayed them, and she was afraid the shuttle port would be just as bad. She had tried to call Heris, but Sirkin was uncharacteristically vague about where she was, only saying she wasn't on the yacht. Cecelia didn't care where she was, she just wanted to be sure they could leave when she reached the station. Marcia's last words rankled . . . "It is not our habit to haggle, Cecelia," said with injured innocence. Stupid people. Stupid breeders of inferior horses; she would get some Singularity genes from a gene catalog if she wanted, and be damned to them. She forced a smile at the ticketing clerk, glad to find that she wasn't at the tail of a long line.
"Any room on the up shuttle?"
The clerk looked surprised and worried both, but clerks often did. His problems were his problems; she had room in her mind for only one thing—leaving Xavier far, far behind. "Yes, ma'am, but—"
"Fine. First class if you have it, but anything will do." What she really wanted was a long shower, a cooling drink, and a good supper. Depending on how long she had to wait for the shuttle, she might eat here, although she didn't remember the shuttle port having anything but machine dispensers.
"But ma'am—you don't want to go up right now," the clerk said earnestly, as if speaking to a willful child.
Cecelia glared at him. "Yes, I do want to go up right now. I have a ship; we're leaving."
"Oh." He looked confused now. "You're leaving the system from the station?"
"Yes." She was in no mood for this nonsense. What business was it of his? "I'm Cecelia de Marktos, and my ship, the Sweet Delight, is at the station; we'll be leaving for Rotterdam as soon as I arrive."
"Oh. Well, in that case—let me see your ID, please." Cecelia stared around the terminal as she waited for the clerk to process her ID and credit cube. Beyond the windows, a shuttle streaked by, landing. She had timed it perfectly. She glanced at the clerk; he was talking busily into a handset. Checking her out? Fine. Let him. She was sick of this place.
The shuttle came into view again, taxiing to the terminal. A ground crew swarmed out to it. Cecelia peered down the corridor to the arrival lounge. Finally a door opened, and people started coming out, a hurrying stream of them. More and more . . . more than she had thought the usual shuttle held.
When they got closer, she realized they looked scared. Had the raider shown up again? Was that why Heris didn't answer? But the clerk tapped her on the arm.
"Lady Cecelia—here—first-class ticket up to the station, but I've been advised to tell you that you really should reconsider. I can't sell you a round trip; if you change your mind, you may not be able to come back down. There's an alert. This is the last shuttle flight; they're evacuating—"
"I'm not planning to stay there," she said, accepting the ticket. "When's departure?"
"As soon as they refuel and turn her around," the clerk said. "You may board right away. And I'm afraid you'll have to hand-carry your luggage."
"Not a problem." She hadn't brought much; she could carry it easily. She heaved her duffel onto her shoulder and started down the corridor. She noticed that no one else joined her.
In the first-class cabin, the crew were scurrying around picking up trash. The seats had been laid flat; she wondered if people had been crammed in side-by-side on them. One of the crew looked up, startled.
"What are you—you have a ticket? A ticket up? Are you crazy?"
"I'm going to meet my ship, which is departing," Cecelia said. "Don't worry about me." She unlatched a seat back and pulled it upright herself, then stowed her gear on the seat next to her. If she was to be the only passenger, she saw no reason to worry about regulations. Then she heard other footsteps coming, and started to move her duffel. But it wasn't passengers. Instead, a line of men in some kind of uniform formed down the aisle, and began passing canisters and boxes covered with warning labels hand to hand. Cecelia leaned out to look down the aisle and see where they were being put, and nearly got clonked in the head.
"Excuse us, ma'am . . . if you'll just keep out of the way," said the nearest. Cecelia sat back, wondering what the labels meant—she vaguely remembered seeing markings like that on the things Heris had installed in her yacht.
"If you could just move that," said someone else, and handed her duffel over. She sat with it on her lap, and began to wonder just what was going on. On the seat where her duffel had been, one of the men placed a heavily padded container labelled fuses danger do not drop and strapped it in as carefully as if it were human. "Don't bump that," he said to Cecelia, with a smile. She smiled back automatically, before she could wonder why or ask anything. Someone yelled, outside, and the men turned and began filing out. She heard the hatch thud closed, and felt the familiar shift in air pressure as the shuttle's circulation system came on. A crewman came back from the front of the shuttle and smiled at her.
"All set? You might want to set your stuff on the floor. It might be a bit rough. Last chance to leave, if you're having second thoughts."
She was having third, fourth, and fifth thoughts, but she still didn't want to get off the shuttle and go back to Marcia and Poots. Or anywhere else on this benighted planet. Surely, when she got to the station, Heris could get he
r out of whatever problem was developing locally. Besides, it would look damn silly to back out now.
"I'm fine," she said. "Thank you. I suppose it is permissible to use the facilities?"
"Yes—but we aren't carrying any meals on this trip. If you need water—"
"I know where the galley is," Cecelia said. "I can serve myself—or you, if you want."
"Great. Stay down until we're well clear." She felt the rumble-bump of the wheels on the runway even as he turned away from her . . . whatever it was, they were in an almighty hurry. The shuttle hesitated only briefly when it turned at the end of the runway, then screamed into the sky . . . she supposed, since the usual visual display in the first-class cabin wasn't on, and the heat shields covering the portholes wouldn't slide back until they were out of the atmosphere.
Nothing happened on the trip; she used the facilities, found the ice water, and a bag of melting ice, offered the pilots water (which they refused) and foil-wrapped packets of cookies, which they accepted. She rummaged in the lockers, finding a whole box of the cookie packets jammed into a corner, and a card with "Meet you at Willie's tomorrow night, 2310" on it in swirly flourishes of green ink. In the top left-hand locker, a pile of coffee filters tumbled out, and she gave up the search for anything more interesting. She shoved the coffee filters back behind their door, and opened a cookie packet. They could call it "Special Deluxe Appetizing Biscuit" if they wanted, but it tasted like the residue of stale crumbs in the bottom of a tin. Cecelia decided she wasn't that hungry.
Chapter Fifteen
A line of passengers crammed the corridor as she came out; most of them gaped at her. She tried to remember which was the shortest way around to Sweet Delight. Then she heard someone calling her.
"Lady Cecelia!" Brun, waving a frantic hand. Sirkin was with her.
"Brun—whatever are you doing there? Why aren't you on the yacht?"
"Don't you know about it?"
"What?"
"The invasion. The Benignity is coming. With a fleet or something. Captain Serrano doesn't think she can hold them off; they're evacuating this station and telling people planetside to go into shelter. Underground if possible."
Across her mind scrolled the broad acres of Marcia and Poots's studfarm, the great log barns, the handsome paddocks, the gleaming horses . . . admittedly horses with conformational faults, but still horses.
"You're serious?"
"Yes—Captain Serrano told Sirkin and me to go downside, find you, and take care of you. She's having a military team crew the yacht—"
"Where is she?"
"On the cruiser," said Brun. "Wait—I'll explain—but you have to get into this line. You have to come with us—downside—"
"I don't want to go back down there," Cecelia said, aware even as she said it that it sounded foolish. "I've been there. I want to be on my ship."
"Come on," said Brun. "You can't do that—there's no crew, and when there is a crew it won't be people you know—come on, get in line with us."
Cecelia wavered. "Well . . ."
"Come on." Brun stepped back, making room, but as Cecelia started toward the gap, angry voices rose.
"Hey! No cutting in front—you got no right—"
Brun turned on them. "She's an old lady; she's my mother's friend—"
Another voice louder than the others. "A Rejuvenant! I'm not losing my chance to get home safe for any damned Rejuvenant!" People shoved forward, slamming into Brun and Sirkin, who could not help slamming into those ahead.
"Damn you!"
"Stop it!"
"No shoving there . . . keep order, keep order . . ." That was two harried-looking station militia. "What's this now?"
Voices erupted, accusing, explaining, demanding. Finally things were quiet enough for explanation.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we don't have even one space left on the down shuttles. One's filling now—hauling maximum mass—and the one you came in on will be the last down. You bought a one-way; you assured the clerk you were bound outsystem on your own ship—"
"That's right," said Cecelia. "But I can't just abandon these two—" She nodded at Brun and Sirkin. "They're friends' children—"
"Sorry, ma'am . . . the clerk did try to warn you. As it is we don't have shuttle capacity for everyone. Some's got to stay and risk it—"
"I'm staying," Brun said, swinging a long leg over the rope that kept them all in line.
"Brun, no!" Cecelia said. "If there's real danger, I want you safe."
"There's always danger," Brun said. "And Captain Serrano said to keep you safe. I can't do that from down there—" She jerked her head in the direction of the planet. The line had closed in behind her, without a word but with absolute determination.
"Brun—" Sirkin turned, started to move.
"No!" Brun and Cecelia spoke as one. "No," Brun said a moment later. "Not you."
"Yes, me." Sirkin too stepped over the rope. "I'm a navigator; I'm good for something in space, and nothing much onplanet. I know I don't have your kind of flair, Brun, but I can free someone else by doing my own work."
Over her head, Cecelia met Brun's eyes. Nice child, Cecelia thought, and if we get out of this alive I will find her a safe berth on some quiet commercial line. Surely I have that much influence. She smiled at the station militia.
"Then you now have two more places for those who thought they must stay," she said. "Do you need these tickets?"
"No, ma'am. Thank you." One of the militia jogged toward the head of the line, and the other nodded to them.
"Well," said Cecelia. "Come along, before the yacht vanishes into space and we're left up here wondering how to run a space station."
"It's a lot like a ship," Brun said. "I've been talking to the people who work here, and met this man who's in charge of—"
"Fine," said Cecelia. "Then if we're stuck we have a chance of survival, but in the meantime, let's catch a ship."
No one was aboard the Sweet Delight. Brun and Sirkin both knew the dockside access codes, and the hatches opened for them. Cecelia lugged her gear to her own suite, and activated her desk. A stack of messages had accumulated since the last time she'd retrieved them, including one from Commerce Bank & Trust which informed her that her balance was more than adequate to purchase all the Singularity straws she wanted. She unpacked her duffel, and decided to shower. Whatever emergency was coming, she might as well meet it clean, in comfortable clothes. She stuffed her dirty clothes in the wash hamper, and turned the shower to full pulse.
She was finally feeling clean, all the travel grime and irritation out of her system, when the lights blinked off and back on so fast that her new panic in darkness didn't have time to reach full strength. She elbowed the shower controls, from water pulse to radiant heat and blow dry. Her pulse slowed, as the lights stayed on, and the fan whirred steadily. She turned, running her fingers through her hair to let the warm air reach her scalp. Then she saw the shadow beyond the shower door, a moving shadow.
"What the hell—!" A male voice, a strange one. The door opened, yanked hard from outside, and Cecelia found herself face-to-face with a uniformed man armed with one of her own hunting rifles, the expensive ones Heris had bought for her back on Sirialis. At second glance he looked more like a boy dressed up to play soldier—a fresh-faced youth who couldn't have been over twenty. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"Kindly hand me my robe," Cecelia said, not bothering to hide what he'd already seen. It wasn't her problem anyway, even if he was turning an unnatural red around the collar. She felt wickedly glad that he was seeing her younger body, not the eighty-six-year-old version. When he didn't move to comply, she lifted her chin. "It's drafty—and my robe is right there, beside you on the warming rack."
"Uh . . . yes, ma'am." Without looking away, he reached out and snagged the robe, fingering the pockets quickly. Cecelia's brows rose, then she realized he thought she might have weapons concealed in it, and her brows rose higher. Weapons? In a bathrobe? Her? He handed it ov
er, and she shrugged into it, tied it around her waist.
"I'm coming out," she said, when he showed no inclination to move, and he stepped back, giving her room. Without haste, she picked up one of the towels on the warming rack and finished drying her feet, then took another and toweled the rest of the dampness out of her hair. She moved to the mirrors, and picked up the comb on the shelf. "I'm Cecelia de Marktos," she said into the mirror as she shaped her hair with the comb. "This was my yacht . . . it's technically Heris Serrano's now, but I've hired it. And who are you?"
"Pivot Major Osala . . . from the R.S.S. cruiser Vigilance. Ma'am."
"And what are you doing on my ship?" Her hair was fluffing into an untidy brush after the shower; it needed trimming. Her lips felt dry; station and ship air was so much drier than the humid surface of Xavier. She spread a protective gloss on her lips and glanced at the soldier in the mirror. He was looking at her as if she were something else—a monster of some sort, a freak.
"Commander Serrano said—is that the same person you called Heris Serrano?"
"I suppose," Cecelia said, turning to face him directly. "Heris Serrano, formerly an R.S.S. officer, and now my captain. She told you to come aboard? I suppose it's all right then."
"Commander Serrano . . . she's taken command of the Vigilance." He sounded unsure.
"She has? Good for her. Even though she did kill a raider with this yacht, if there's trouble coming, she'd much better have a cruiser to fight with."
"But ma'am . . . aren't you scared at all? Of . . . of me?" The confusion on his young face almost made her laugh. "I have a weapon—"
Cecelia snorted. She couldn't help herself, even if it was cruel, but she suppressed the laughter that wanted to follow. "Young man . . . pivot major is it? . . . didn't Commander Serrano tell you about me?"
"Uh . . . no, ma'am. The ship was supposed to be empty, only we found the entry hatch open, and Jig Faroe went to the bridge with the rest of the crew except me and Hugh, we were supposed to look for stragglers."