By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (43 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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Beka didn’t dare cry out a warning; the moment of divided attention might give sus-Airaalin the opening he was looking for. She lifted her blaster—still set on Full—and took aim.
I’m sorry, Master Ransome. Dadda may never forgive me, but I can’t let you stop us now.
She never had a chance to fire. A dark-clad figure, moving quickly, stepped between Mistress Hyfid and the threatened blow.
Goddammit, Ignac
’, Beka thought. Her teeth drew back from her lips in a frustrated snarl.
This isn’t your fight. Get the hell out of the way before somebody shoots you!
But Ignaceu LeSoit, blaster drawn, was already blocking Beka’s line of fire. “I tell you, old man, let the matter take its course.”
LeSoit fired, but Master Ransome never altered expression. Beka saw the bolt connect, but Ransome did not fall. LeSoit didn’t seem surprised.
“You endanger everything,” he said to Ransome, and raised his blaster to fire again.
Ransome struck out with his staff—LeSoit’s second bolt went wild as Ransome caught him across the throat with a killing blow. Beka watched her shipmate crumple under the impact.
Dead
, she thought, as he fell and her line of fire came clear at last. She shot Errec Ransome twice before LeSoit hit the metal deckplates, but it did no more good than shooting sus-Airaalin had done. LeSoit lay motionless, blood pooling under his face.
Dead. Damn you, Ignac’, why couldn’t you stay away from all this?
She fired again—
Damn all these Mages and Adepts, you can’t get a clear shot at any of them!—
and heard the buzz of another weapon as somebody else—
Jessan, it has to be; what the hell took him so long?
—joined in. One, at least, of the bolts connected; Ransome jerked and fell.
“Errec!”
It was the Domina Perada who had cried out. Beka turned involuntarily toward the sound of her mother’s voice—only to see, at the boundaries of her vision, that Ransome was not yet dead, but pushing up again onto his feet. Beka pivoted—
What does it
take
to kill one of these sons of bitches, anyway?
—but it was too late. The Adept Master had Ignac’ LeSoit’s blaster in one hand, and the other arm wrapped around the neck of the Nammerinish girl, Klea Santreny.
Why her?
Beka wondered.
Is it because she was the closest, or because she was the weakest—or is it because she’s Owen’s apprentice, the way Owen was his?
For a moment, all movement in the cargo bay froze, except for the dark, twinned figures of Llannnat Hyfid and Grand Admiral sus-Airaalin, still striking and turning in their private and deadly dance. Not even the sound of blaster fire had broken into their concentration.
“This is madness, Errec,” said Perada. “The girl is nothing to you. Let her go.”
The Adept Master turned his eyes toward her and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t finished yet.”
In the next instant, Ransome and Klea vanished together—as cleanly as if they had taken a step away from realspace and gone into hyper. Beka fired again, sending a half-dozen shots into the empty air where Ransome had stood only a fraction of a second before. In the middle of the cargo bay, Llannat and sus-Airaalin never paused in their duel.
“It’s no use,” said Owen. His face was pale under its thin film of sweat, and his voice was bleak. “He’s taken her into the Void.”
And from there, Beka thought, who the hell knows where he might go and how much more harm he might be able to do? Somebody has to stop him before he screws up everything.
“Figure out how to go after him, dammit,” she snarled at her brother. “You were messing around in the Void just a few minutes ago. Can’t you find the way back without a road map?”
“Adepts don’t—”
“Ransome just did. Do it.” She paused, then lowered her blaster and spoke again in a quieter voice. “As a favor, Owen”—
and you’ve never refused me a favor yet
—“take
me
there. The son of a bitch killed my friend, and if I can catch him, he’s dead meat.”
Owen looked at her for a long moment. For an instant Beka thought that he was going to refuse her after all. Then she felt the room go dark and twist around her. She was going down, falling away … .
Panic caught at her throat:
This is unnatural; nobody should do something like this without a starship around them!
She reached out blindly for support and stability as the twisting continued and the universe tried to move sideways. She caught what she needed, and the random twisting steadied into a kind of steady progress, like a starship settling onto its proper course.
Pick the jump point—make the run-up—
And we’re through.
 
Nyls Jessan let his blaster hand sag down to his side. The sound of weapons fire had died away in the cargo hold, and the compartment, which had seemed crowded before, was nearly empty. Captain Rosselin-Metadi was gone—vanished—with her brother—no, with
both
her brothers, and the Domina Perada as well.
Gone after Master Ransome
, he thought wearily.
It’s only right; he was their friend, so they should be the ones to deal with him. I suppose I’m still here because someone has to keep an eye on this end of things.
And there aren’t very many of us left.
Not many at all. Only Llannat and the Magelord, caught up in their single combat to the exclusion of all else; a ragged man in a general’s uniform, who regarded everything with dismay; and Doctor Inesi syn-Tavaite, on her knees beside LeSoit’s crumpled form.
The Eraasian shook her head and stood up. “Iekkenat Lisaiet is dead,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Jessan said. The words sounded flat and inadequate. “I never thought that Errec Ransome, of all people, would turn and betray us.”
The man in uniform made a vague gesture toward the duel still continuing in the middle of the hold. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
“I am doing something,” Jessan told him. “I’m staying here and watching what happens between Mistress Hyfid and the Grand Admiral. Regardless of what comes next, there have to be witnesses.”
 
Back inside
Karipavo
, Gil made his way forward through the dark passageways. Lights and gravity had failed entirely now, though the pressure gauge on his suit indicated that the atmosphere was holding out in the inner compartments. He opened the faceplate. Might as well breathe ship’s air for as long as he could.
Strange. He wasn’t alone aboard the ’
Pavo
after all. With the helmet open, he could hear a voice, a woman singing. He couldn’t make out the words.
Gil followed the sound—it was coming from the detention area. Soon he could hear the verses clearly enough to recognize the tune. The last time he’d heard that song, the free-spacers of Galcen Prime had been singing it at Beka Rosselin-Metadi’s wake:
“Forgot by the planets that bore us,
Forsaken by all we hold dear,
The good ones have all gone before us
And only the evil are here.”
 
He flashed his light inside the compartments one at a time, until he came to one that had a prisoner in it. Gil assumed that the crew member assigned to open the brig during abandon-ship must have been one of the casualties.
“Assemble my spaceship around me
And fuel it with beer when you’re done,
I don’t need a life-support system
If only the engines will run.”
 
“Then strap me again in—” Rosel Quetaya stopped her song and looked up at him. “Going down with the ship, Commodore?”
“I had some work to do,” he said. “And leaving someone else to die alone in the dark isn’t my style. Come with me and let’s see if we can’t find something to eat.”
Together they made their way forward toward the wardroom. Gil was reasonably certain that there’d be a cha’a dispenser nearby, and with luck it would be undamaged. Some of the red-glows were working in this part of the ship. Gravity seemed to have stabilized at a small fraction of normal—or perhaps it was the centrifugal force of the ship’s rotation that gave the illusion.
They turned the last corner into the wardroom pantry, and found that Lieutenant Jhunnei had gotten there before them. The commodore’s aide was sitting on a table, sipping a cup of hot cha’a. Two more steaming cups sat on the table beside her.
“Hello, Commodore,” she said. “I was expecting you.”
“I ordered you to abandon ship,” Gil said.
“If ship’s power were still up, I’d already have the court-martial forms filled out for your signature, sir,” Jhunnei said. “But I guess you’ll just have to mark down another count of neglect of duty on your mental list and leave it at that.”
“I didn’t want you to get killed due to my incompetence.”
“Not to worry,” Jhunnei said. “The way things happened, by the time I got to the launch bay everyone had gone. There was only one
Myrkit
-class shuttle left behind.” She definitely looked pleased with herself, Git thought; and she was smiling broadly as she continued, “I really don’t know why nobody noticed it before I got there.”
 
Llannat gasped for breath and dragged her arm back into position. She was tired, tired in mind and body. Her muscles were aching, and she was having a hard time focusing her eyes.
The power of the universe—which she had drawn upon freely so many times before—wasn’t responding to her calls for help any longer. Only her own efforts protected her from the black-clad figure who came on and on against her like a force of nature.
She felt the deck heave under her feet and lost her balance. Falling, she felt the staff the other was wielding against her smash down across her back. She rolled away. Light was fading around her. Her eyes growing dim? No, the lights in the compartment were going out. They flared back up again. She opened herself again to the universe, but it failed to come.
Now she looked elsewhere for power—perhaps it was in the tangle of silver cords she could see around her. They had come back to her more strongly when the light had faded. Maybe she could bend them to her will?
No. It was impossible to concentrate on moving the cords and still pay enough attention to the staff in her hand. She was lost. More blows kept on coming in at her, their force great enough to make her hand sting when she caught them on her staff, and her counterstrokes were always turned.
“No,” she muttered. She threw a series of blows, but they were turned as well. Her own defenses came more and more slowly. But she wouldn’t give up. Wouldn’t go down.
Llannat opened herself to the Adepts’ power, to the bright oneness with the universe that accepted the flow of power as it was, without trying to change it. She choked up on her staff, shortening it, holding it in both hands, and swung it flat, putting her shoulders behind the blow. It slid beneath her opponent’s arm, taking him in the ribs. She could feel bone break under the impact as she followed through. He fell heavily onto his side, then rolled on his back, breathing with difficulty.
Casting aside her staff, she tore off her mask and dropped to her knees beside him. “Come on,” she said. “You aren’t hurt that bad. I’m a medic. Let me help you.”
She removed his mask. The man was pale, too pale, beneath the layer of sweat.
He’s going into shock.
She looked about the cargo bay for help, and saw Nyls Jessan, and the Eraasian woman who had created the replicant.
“Jessan,” she said. “Get over here. I’ve got a casualty.”
“No, Mistress,” the man before her said. He spoke with difficulty, each word a prodigy of effort. “I am dying. It is as it must be. Take my energy, make it yours.”
“I don’t want your energy. I can help you. Your wound isn’t fatal, if we hurry.”
“No help,” the man said. At last Llannat recognized his voice—he was the First she had spoken with before, in the Mages’ sickbay. “This is as it must be. You have defeated me. You are the First of all the Mage-Circles—and you are not bound to the Resurgency on Eraasi by any oaths whatsoever. For the sake of the galaxy, Mistress, you must hold your power and use it well.”
His breath failed him then; he closed his eyes. Llannat felt for a pulse. Nothing. The Grand Admiral was dead.
A man walked forward from the shadows, a short man in a brown uniform. He wore a staff at his belt.

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