Sporting Chance

Chapter Twenty

Sirkin, slumped in dull misery on her bunk, heard first the delicate snick of the door lock going home, and then the intercom. She clenched her hands in her quilted coverlet. It was impossible. She had checked and rechecked that course; she had paid attention to every warning in the charts . . . she could not have made such an error. But here they were, and of course—she had to admit the logic of it—the captain had decided she was responsible. She was the traitor.

I am not! She wanted to scream that aloud, but what good would it do? No one would believe her. All the miseries of the past months landed on her again. Amalie’s weakness and Amalie’s betrayal . . . and then Amalie’s death, the way that mutilated face and body looked in the morgue. Hot tears rolled down Sirkin’s face; she didn’t notice. And she had tried, tried so hard to work her way out of it. She had acted cheerful; she had gone on working. She had even enjoyed (and felt guilty for enjoying) those visits with Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter. Her hand strayed to the locket Brun had bought her; inside was the lock of Amalie’s hair Meharry had snipped. Brun—if Brun were here, she wouldn’t believe it was Sirkin’s fault.

Except it had to be. She knew Oblo and the others couldn’t be doing it; they were too loyal to Captain Serrano. Besides, why would they start playing tricks now, when everything had gone so well on the way back from Sirialis? It made no sense. She knew she was no traitor; she knew she had done her work carefully. Yet the work she did came undone somehow, between one watch and the next, and if it wasn’t Oblo or Issi Guar, who could it be? Was she going crazy? Was she losing her memory? Had someone planted some kind of mind-control in her? The thought terrified her. She sank into a daze of misery, staring at the opposite bulkhead.

When her door lock clicked again, she thought someone had come to kill her. She didn’t really care anymore, she told herself, but her gut churned with fear and she felt icy cold. She watched the door slide open with sick dread.

“I . . . know . . . you . . . didn’t . . . do . . . that . . .” Lower than she was looking, in the hoverchair, Lady Cecelia. She had not seen Lady Cecelia since she came aboard, and the shock brought her out of herself. She rolled off the bunk and stood up, instantly dizzy from time she’d spent motionless.

“Sit . . . down . . . don’t . . . faint.”

Sirkin struggled with her dizziness and finally did what she was told, slumping back to the bunk. Lady Cecelia carried a set of keying wands, and looked as smug as her condition allowed.

“You shouldn’t—the captain will be really angry—”

“Let . . . her.”

“But she’s right—something is wrong, and it must have been my fault, because I know Oblo wouldn’t—” She was babbling, and couldn’t stop; she wanted to cry and fought not to.

“She . . . is . . . wrong . . . I . . . told . . . her . . .”

“Did she say you could let me out?” Hope rose—maybe the captain had found out what really happened; maybe it wasn’t her fault after all. Lady Cecelia’s face contorted with what she wanted to say, and couldn’t.

“Not . . . that. . . . Earlier . . .” Lady Cecelia guided the hoverchair into the cubicle, crowding the bunk, and closed the door behind her. “She . . . doesn’t . . . know . . . I . . . came . . . here. . . . She . . . is . . . wrong . . . about . . . you.”

“How do you know?” Rude, she realized a moment later, but she had to know.

“Age . . .” Lady Cecelia said, and grinned a death’s head grin. “You . . . are . . . not . . . that . . . kind . . . of . . . girl.” She held up her hand, a clear signal for Sirkin to listen without interrupting. “Who . . . joined . . .” Pause. “Ship . . . last?”

That had to mean crew, Sirkin thought. “Vivi Skoterin, just before we left Rockhouse. She’s from the ship Captain Serrano had in the R.S.S. She’s an environmental tech.”

“Where . . . now?”

“On the bridge, I expect. Oblo asked her to stand in for me as navigation second during the jumps.”

“No . . . Mistake . . .”

“Well, she’s not trained as a navigator, but all she has to do is check the numbers as Oblo enters them.”

“No . . . that . . . is . . . the . . . mistake.”

She wasn’t getting all that Lady Cecelia meant.

“She . . . is . . . problem . . .”

Sirkin stared at the old lady, shocked.

“Skoterin? But she’s—she’s one of them. She served with them before. They trust her—” Even as she said it, she saw the flaw in that. They trusted her; it didn’t make her trustworthy. “She couldn’t have . . .” she breathed, even as she realized that Skoterin might very well have been able to make Sirkin look incompetent. “She . . . she brought me those charts—the ones I used to set up the course . . . the wrong course.” Inside, a great joyous shout in her head: Not my fault. It’s not my fault. I’m not crazy.

Lady Cecelia nodded. “She . . . made . . . you . . . look . . . bad . . .” Long pause. “Captain . . . did . . . not . . . look . . . further . . . mistake.”

Sirkin’s relief rebounded to fear. “It’s too late, though. We’re going to be attacked—captured—”

“Not . . . captured . . .” Lady Cecelia’s head jerked through a slow shake. “It . . . is . . . too . . . convenient . . . if . . . we . . . disappear. Prince . . . me . . . and . . . all.”

“We do have weapons; we might fight free,” Sirkin said hopefully. “That is, if Vivi hasn’t—”

“She . . . would . . . have . . .” Lady Cecelia said. “But . . . prince . . . help . . .” She turned the hoverchair, opened the door again, and started out as Sirkin stood up uncertainly. “Come . . . with . . . me . . .”

Once the enemy ships began their stalk, Heris gave no further thought to her passengers. At the end, if capture seemed likely, she’d make sure they didn’t suffer, but now she had a battle to fight. Maybe.

“How far do we have to go before we can jump?” she asked Oblo.

“A long way . . . my first approximation is over seven hours. Thing’s got moons as massive as your average planet—we don’t want to be wrong . . .”

“Fine—keep an eye on it. Arkady, what are we facing?”

“Right now just two, but of course our scans are skewed at this relative velocity. Looks like they knew what vector to expect for our insertion but not how much vee we’d have on us. They’re running parallel and catching up. And no, we can’t outrun them, not if they’re the usual C.H. cruiser-weight.” He paused, and transferred his scan data to her display. “You can see the weaponry—all hot and ready to fire. Want me to bring them up? I don’t think it’s enough to scare them off, but—”

“No. We can’t bluff, but maybe we can surprise them when it counts.” Heris glanced over at his boards, where the status lights showed ships’ weapons as strings of green lights, each column tipped with one yellow. “I wonder why they didn’t take us when we dropped out,” she asked, not expecting an answer. “The logical thing for them to do is blow us away—no one knew we would be inside Benignity space—and if they did know, they’d shrug and go ‘Oops.’ If we quietly disappear, it solves a lot of problems for some powerful people.”

“I’d be glad to quietly disappear if I could figure out how,” Oblo said, scowling at his board. “Vivi, pull up this section in Shirmer’s Atlas, will you? Maybe they’ve got something—”

“Yessir.” Heris watched as Skoterin picked her way around the backup navigation board, punching first one key then another. Slow—of course, she didn’t know the board well; it wasn’t her specialty. If only Sirkin—the good Sirkin—had been there . . . but no use wishing. Suddenly Ginese and Meharry both cursed and started tapping at their boards.

“What?” Heris asked, though she could see from here that the weapons boards had changed color. Green lights had gone orange; the yellow lights at the top had gone to blue; the system was locked down, nonfunctional.

“Damn her!” Petris turned to glare at Heris. “What do you want to bet she had a control tap to her quarters?”

“No bet. Go down there and—” And what? Kill her? Heris couldn’t give that order, not yet. “Get it fixed,” she said. “Call Mr. Guar to the bridge, Oblo; you need more experienced help. Skoterin, get back to Mr. Haidar, and tell him to unlock the small arms. Bring us each a weapon, and start stacking the excess in the corridor. Here’s the key wand for the weapons locker.”

“Yes, Captain.” Skoterin hurried away; Petris grabbed a toolkit off the bulkhead and followed her.

“They stripped our beacon,” Oblo said. “Maybe they wanted to be sure they had the right ship . . .”

“Maybe.” Seconds ticked away.

“Heris, Sirkin isn’t in her quarters.” Petris, on the open intercom. “And I can’t find any control tap. She might have been somewhere else when you locked the doors—” He sounded both angry and uncertain. Heris tried to remember if she’d actually checked the personal monitors to confirm Sirkin’s location . . . she didn’t know.

“Or she might have gotten out. If she’s been planning this, she might have key wands—”

“I’m not finding a hard tap,” Ginese said, from the deck under his control boards. “Not one single thread that shouldn’t be here. Of course, a directed magnetic pulse could do that, but it would have to be close.”

“A control override would work, anywhere between here and the weapons themselves,” Meharry said. She, too, was half under her console, prodding at things.

“But not on this ship—it’s not like a ship designed for fighting. We had no regional alternative nodes. Remember how we had to route the cables all over the place? To knock the whole board down like that, it’d have to be intercepting signals pretty high up . . . which ought to show as an additional cable . . . or be a pulse signal from somewhere on the bridge.” Arkady’s voice sounded muffled as he disappeared completely from view. “And I don’t see . . .”

Meharry’s face popped up from beneath her console. “Mine’s clean. I see what you mean, Arkady. We put in that shielding—if it’s pulse, it has to be on the bridge somewhere.”

Heris said, “What about a secondary? Something exterior to signal a controller on the bridge, through the regular optical cables, and set off a pulse signal?”

“Might be. Complicated, though. Doesn’t always work even on our ships.” Our ships clearly meant R.S.S. ships. “What’s Sirkin’s secondary training?”

“She could do it,” Heris said, answering the real question. “I had her crawling through all the computer controls on the first voyage—she knows as much about this ship’s electrical and electronic layout as I do. The only thing she might not know is the weapons systems you installed when she wasn’t aboard.”

“INTRUDER. FAMILIAS SHIP HARPER VALLEY.” That was on the broad band, in their own language—heavily accented, but quite understandable.

“Just in case we didn’t know who we were,” Oblo said with a shrug. “Now what, Captain?”

“Well, they didn’t blow us away straight off,” Heris said. “Let’s see what they do with this.” She thought a moment, then said, “Send them a voiceburst, just as we did with Livadhi.” That might buy a few seconds—but they needed hours. She got back on the intercom. “Petris—better link with Skoterin and get yourself a weapon. Wherever Sirkin is, she might be dangerous.”

“Right.” He had left Sirkin’s quarters, she saw on the personnel monitor, and headed toward the main service corridor. She couldn’t find Sirkin now, but that made sense; she’d have taken off the tagger, and probably done something to keep the automatic sensors from recognizing her. Heris hadn’t yet entered the data for all Cecelia’s medical team, so she didn’t know who made up that cluster of dots outside Mr. Smith’s quarters, the cluster now moving along a corridor toward the service area.

“Lady Cecelia,” Heris said over the intercom. “Please stay in your quarters, and get your medical team with you. It is not safe to wander around right now.”

“INTRUDER SHIP HARPER VALLEY CEASE MANEUVERS OR WE WILL FIRE ON YOU.”

“So tactful,” Ginese said.

“I’ve got the last squirt out of her,” Oblo said. “Trying to get in the shadow of that moon—”

“Which you hope no one is hiding behind,” Heris murmured. “I would be.”

“Swing out, then?”

“Costs us vee, gains us space. I hate the feeling we’re being driven into a preset trap.”

“Fine.” He made adjustments on his board. Meharry straightened.

“That’s odd.”

“What?”

“You touched your board, and mine flickered. Do something on the other one.”

Issigai Guar, on the secondary, shrugged, and fed in a query.

“Aha.” Meharry reached for her own toolkit and fiddled with it. “So that’s—it’s controlled from your board, Issi. Let me get at it.” He pushed back willingly, and Meharry ran her instruments over it. “She must have set this up with a time delay, so anyone touching the board after a certain time would set off a signal locking up weapons control. Clever. If she’d been better at the patches, my board wouldn’t have flickered and we’d never have found it. Glad she was careless about this, too.”

“They’re targeting,” Ginese said. Meaning, Shut up and fix it.

“I’m not wasting time,” Meharry said. She plucked the overlay off the top of the secondary board and prodded something underneath with delicacy. “This little beauty—I don’t want to blow anything if it’s wired that way—can just now slip . . . out.” She slipped the tiny object into her pocket.

Heris saw, before Ginese could speak, his board come live. One by one, the orange lights turned green, one column after another as the weapons ran through self-checks and warmed.

“Code Three as soon as you can, Mr. Ginese,” Heris said. Meharry’s board began to green up, far slower than Heris wanted. Guar was reassembling his console; Oblo wore an expression of limpid unconcern that Heris knew from earlier battles.

“LAST WARNING. INTRUDER SHIP CEASE MANEUVERING IN TEN SECONDS OR WE WILL FIRE ON YOU.” Nicely calculated, that. The transmission lag was down to eight seconds, but the whole—

“Here it goes—” said Ginese. On the large screen, the tracks of the other ships, the analysis of their weaponry, the first white-hot arcs as two missiles lofted toward where they would be, one from each pursuer. His board was almost completely green, the yellow dots lit now halfway across the top.

And in the corridors of the yacht, small-arms fire erupted, short and disastrous. Then silence. Meharry shifted her board’s controls to Ginese, and moved to stand by the bridge hatch.

“Lockdown, Captain?”

“No—we’ve got loyal crew out there . . .”

Oblo was up, too. “Issi, your control. I can go out—”

“No . . . there’s only one to worry about, and with any luck she’s dead.” And with enough luck there’s no hole in the hull, and no one else was hit, and Lady Cecelia and Mr. Smith are still safe for the brief length of this uneven fight. All that ran through Heris’s mind as she watched on the screen the enemy’s missiles coming nearer. On Ginese’s board, the yellow dots turned red as the weapons came operational.

“Let’s just see . . .” Ginese said. His finger stabbed at the board and the two missiles seemed to stagger in their course, then swerve aside. “Yeah. Still works fine.”

Heris let out the breath she had taken. “If they could all be that easy,” she said. That hadn’t even required their offensive weaponry. Ginese chuckled, a sound to strike any sensible person cold.

“Then I couldn’t play with my other little darlings.” His shoulders tensed, watching his displays, and he murmured, “Oh, you would . . . idiots.”

Heris didn’t interrupt with questions. The second wave of missiles had been launched before the enemy would have had time to get scan data back from the yacht’s activated weapons. Four, this time, bracketing their expected course. These Arkady dispatched with contemptuous ease. What mattered now was what else they would use . . . their scans revealed optical and ballistic possibilities.

“Response, Captain?” They could of course launch a counterattack—no one was there to remind her it was a bad idea to get into a slugfest with two larger ships.

“Let’s try to dodge their bullets and help them run low on ammunition,” Heris said. “Why change what’s working?” She kept an eye on Oblo’s scanning screens . . . if that moon had held a trap, and if the pursuers had realized they weren’t going into it, a third ship might come dashing out right about . . . there. But they had trusted too much to their trap; the third ship had low relative vee, and though boosting frantically, was caught deep in the well with little maneuverability.

“There’s a target, Mr. Ginese, if you just want something to shoot at.”

“A bit chancy,” he said. “I’d rather save what we’ve got for these two.”

“Just don’t forget that third one; if it launches something at us, it could still hurt us.”

“Right, Captain.” In the tone of teach-your-grandmother-to-suck-eggs. In that long pause, while the enemy realized they had an armed ship and not a helpless victim to subdue, while the enemy commander—Heris imagined—cursed and chose an alternate plan—she had time to wonder why it was so quiet. Someone should have reported back by now.

She called up the personnel monitor again, and saw the cluster of green dots in exactly the wrong place, down in the service corridor near the weapons locker. What if Sirkin had attacked Lady Cecelia—shot the clone—was holding Lady Cecelia hostage?

“Meharry.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Heris pointed to the layout with the little green dots. “Get down there and find out what’s going on—and break it up. First priority, secure the ship; next, Lady Cecelia; next, Mr. Smith.”

“Yes, sir!” Meharry’s sleepy green eyes were wide awake now, and eager. Oblo moved forward but Heris waved him back.

“No—we’ve got a battle up here, too, and you can do either nav or weapons. Go help Ginese for now.”

Sirkin followed Lady Cecelia’s chair out of her quarters with a mixture of reluctance and glee. It wasn’t her fault; she hadn’t made those mistakes, and she knew—she thought she knew—who had. But nobody would believe her, she was sure, and she doubted the captain would have the patience to let Lady Cecelia literally spell it out. If anyone came down here, they’d believe the worst of her . . . especially now that she was out of her quarters.

Lady Cecelia’s hoverchair made swift, silent progress along the corridor toward the main lounge. Sirkin looked over her head to see Mr. Smith and several of Lady Cecelia’s medical team clumped together there. As she watched, they came forward, and Lady Cecelia reversed the chair, nearly hitting Sirkin.

“Weapons,” said Mr. Smith. “Where are the small-arms lockers?” Sirkin knew that, but she wasn’t sure what they were doing, or if it was right. He grinned at her, that famous grin she’d seen on many a newscast, and punched her arm lightly. “Come on, we’ve got to get armed, and keep whoever it is from taking the ship away from your captain.”

“Skoterin,” she found herself saying as she led the way back into crew country. “Joined the ship just before we left Rockhouse . . . old crewmate . . .”

“One of the group that was court-martialed?”

“No—just demoted afterwards. Some enlisted were, she said.”

“What specialty?”

“Environmental systems,” Sirkin said, almost jogging to keep up with his long legs.

They came out of that corridor into another, which angled downward; Heris would have recognized it as leading to the place where Iklind had died. Sirkin did not; she only knew they should take the turn to the right. The weapons lockers, filled with all those expensive oddments (as Ginese had called them) on Sirialis, were that way, around a turn or two. Sirkin, sure of the way, went first; Mr. Smith came behind her, and then Lady Cecelia in her chair, surrounded by attendants.

Around the last corner . . . Sirkin stopped abruptly, and almost fell as Lady Cecelia’s chair bumped into the back of her legs. The weapons lockers were open, and on the deck lay Nasiru Haidar, facedown and motionless, with blood pooled under his head. Sirkin could not speak; her mind ran over the same words like a hamster in its wheel . . . I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it. Mr. Smith pushed past her, and knelt beside the fallen man; Sirkin edged forward, trying to remember to breathe. And one of the medical attendants rushed forward, opening a belt pack.

“Just stop right there,” someone said. Sirkin looked up as Skoterin stepped out of an open hatch across from the weapons lockers. Skoterin had one of the weapons—Sirkin wasn’t sure what it was, though she knew she’d seen its like in newsclips and adventure cubes. It looked deadly enough, and Skoterin handled it as if it were part of her body. “How very convenient,” Skoterin said. “Just the people I wanted to see, and now you’re all here together.” She had on a black mesh garment over her uniform; Sirkin found her mind wandering to it, wondering what it was.

“Poor Brigdis,” Skoterin said, looking right at her. Sirkin felt her heart falter in its beat. “You must continue to be the scapegoat awhile longer, I fear. Pity that you went mad and murdered Lady Cecelia and the prince—or his clone, it doesn’t much matter.”

“But I didn’t do any of it!” That burst out of Sirkin’s mouth without any warning.

“Of course you didn’t, though I rather hoped you wouldn’t figure that out until whatever afterlife you believe in.”

“But you were on her ship! How can you do this to her? To the others?”

Skoterin grimaced. “It is distasteful, I’ll admit. I have nothing against Captain Serrano, even though she did manage to ruin my career as a deep agent. It’s certainly not personal vengeance for having managed to arrange the deaths of two of my relatives—”

“Who?”

“Relatives I didn’t particularly like, in fact, though we do take family more seriously than some other cultures. Who scratches my brother—or cousin, as in this case—scratches me. You were there, Brigdis: surely you remember the terrible death by poisoning of poor Iklind.”

“But you—”

“Enough. You two by Haidar—move back over there.” Mr. Smith and the medical team member—Sirkin had not even had a chance to learn their names or positions—moved back near Lady Cecelia. “You, Brig—you stand by Haidar.”

She was moving, under the black unseeing eye of that weapon, despite herself. She could hardly feel her body; she felt as if she were floating. Her foot bumped something; she looked down to find her shoe pressed against Haidar’s head. He was breathing; she felt the warm breath even through the toe of her shoe. Her mind clung to that, like a child clinging to a favorite toy in a storm. One thing was normal: Haidar was alive.

“Take one of those weapons from the rack, and hit him.” Sirkin stared at Skoterin. “Go on, girl. They’re not loaded; you can’t hurt me with it. I want your fingerprints on it, along with his blood. Whack him in the head with it, hard.”

“No.” It came out very soft, but she had said it. Skoterin’s face contracted.

“Do it now, or I’ll shoot your precious Lady Cecelia.”

“You will anyway.” Sirkin felt the uselessness of her argument, but she also felt stubborn. If she was going to die anyway, she wanted to die without her fingerprints on a weapon which had killed someone else. “Why should I help you?”

“I don’t have time for this,” Skoterin said, and levelled the weapon at Sirkin. Sirkin panicked, grabbed the nearest object in the rack, and threw it at Skoterin, just as Mr. Smith made a dive for her, and Skoterin fired.

The noise was appalling; Sirkin heard screaming as well as the weapon itself. When it was over, she felt very very tired, and only slowly realized that she had been hit . . . that was her blood on the deck now . . . and she had to close her eyes, just for a moment.

Meharry smelled trouble before she got anywhere near the weapons lockers. An earthy, organic stench that had no business wafting out of the air vents. She knew it well, and proceeded with even more caution thereafter, taking a roundabout route she hoped no one would expect. She had her personal weapons, just as Arkady had—hers were the little knives in their sheaths, and the very small but very deadly little automatic tucked into her boot. If Sirkin thought she was going to take Meharry by surprise . . . She paused, listening again. A faint groan, was it? Real or fake? Scuffing feet, difficult breaths . . . really she didn’t know why everyone didn’t carry a pocket scanner. Much more sensible than sticking your head around corners so that someone could shoot it off. Carefully, she slid out the fiberoptic probe, and eased its tip to the corner . . . then checked her backtrail and overhead before putting her eye to the eyepiece.

Carnage, she’d suspected. Bodies sprawled all over the deck near the weapons lockers. And on his feet, cursing softly as he applied pressure bandages as fast as he could, Petris. Why hadn’t he reported? Then she saw the ruin of the nearby pickups. He must have found this and simply set to work to save those he could. She retrieved the visual probe, and hoped she was right in her guess—because if Petris was the problem they were in a mess far too bad for belief.

“Petris—” she called softly, staying out of sight.

“Methlin! Tell Heris to get the rest of the medic team down here fast. Lady Cecelia’s still alive.”

“You all right?”

“I got here late,” Petris said, not really answering the question. Good enough. Meharry backed up to the first undamaged intercom and called in. Multiple casualties, what she’d seen.

“What?”

“Just get the medics down here, he says. I’m going to help unless Arkady needs me—”

“No, we only have three ships after us now.” Only three, right. “I’ve put Oblo with Arkady.”

Meharry walked around the corner, still wary, and found a situation that didn’t fit her theories.

“Here—” Petris shoved rolls of bandaging material at her. “See what you can do with those three; they’re alive. The clone’s dead; so is Skoterin, and I think Haidar and Sirkin, but now you’re here I can look.”

Meharry continued Petris’s work, glancing at Lady Cecelia—clearly alive, though bloody, but lying against the wreck of her chair as if stunned. She took a quick look at Skoterin, startled to see her wearing personal armor—it hadn’t saved her from a shot to the head.

“Damn Sirkin,” Meharry said. “I didn’t think she could shoot that straight.”

“She didn’t,” Petris said. “I did. It wasn’t Sirkin after all.”

“Skoterin?”

“Yep. The dumbass wasted time explaining it to them—if she’d gone on a bit longer, I’d have nailed her without the rest of this. But she started to shoot Sirkin, and the clone jumped her, and that’s when I arrived.”

Meharry shook her head. “I didn’t know you could shoot that straight.” Whatever else she might have said was cut off by the arrival of the others in Lady Cecelia’s medical team.