Quiet Knives (6 page)

She'd wanted to time it closer, but there
was the ship to be brought up to spec, and she daren't gamble that
Vashon would find nothing wrong. Likely he wouldn't, but it wasn't
the way to bet, not with Kore waiting for her, with who knew what
on his dance card.

"Couple weeks, local," she said to Su, and
the other woman nodded.

"Let's do this again, before I ship out,"
she said, and finished off her beer in one long swallow. She
thumped the bottle to the table. "For now, gotta lift.
Business."

"I hear that," Midj said, dredging up a
grin. "I'm at the Haven for the next while, then back on-ship.
Gimme a holler when you know you got time for dinner. I'll stand
the cost."

"Like hell you will," Su said amiably. She
got her feet under her and was gone, leaving Midj alone with the
rest of her beer and the tab.

* * *

HE WALKED DOWN THE ramp easy, not hurrying,
a pilot on his way to his ship, that was all. He turned the corner
and froze, there on the edge of the hallway, still out of range of
the camera's wide eye--and the woman leaning against the wall, gun
holstered, waiting.

Waiting for him, he had no doubt. He knew
her--Sambra Reallen--who hadn't been anybody particular, and now
ran in Grom Trogar's pack; high up in the pack, though not so high
that calling attention to herself might get fatal. If she was here,
calmly waiting for him go through the one door he had to go
through--then he was too late.

He nodded, once, turned, and went back up
the hall, walking no faster than he had going down, and with as
little noise.

Too
late
, he thought, as he reached
street-level.
Damn
.

* * *

THERE WERE TWO WAYS to play
it from here, given that he'd sworn not to be a damn' fool. The
strike for the ship, that might've been foolish, though he'd had
reason to hope that the fiction of the Judge's continued residence
would cover him. The Judge's absence would still serve as cover,
since he
was
the
Judge's courier. But the fact that one of Chairman Trogar's own had
been waiting for him--that was bad. He wondered how bad, as he ran
his keycard through the coder.

If they'd been waiting for him at the ship,
then they likely knew some things. They probably knew that the
Judge and most of the household was gone, scattered, along with all
the rest of the Judges and staff who had managed to go missing
before Grom Trogar thought to look for them. It was unlikely that
they knew everything--and they'd figure that, too. Which meant he
had a bad time ahead of him.

Nothing to help it now--if he ran anywhere
on Shaltren, they'd catch him, and the inconvenience would only
make his examination worse. If he waited for them, and went
peaceably--it was going to be bad. Chairman Trogar would see to
that.

If they'd been at the ship,
they'd be
here
soon, if they weren't already.

The door to the house slid open.

He stepped inside, playing the part of a man
with nothing to fear. His persona had long been established--a bit
stolid, a bit slow, a steady pilot, been with the Judge since his
itinerant days.

He flicked on the lights--public room empty.
So far, so good. They'd take their time coming in--Judges and their
crews, after all, had a reputation for being a bit chancy to mess
with.

There was some urgency on him, now. He'd
planned for back-up; it was second nature anymore to plan for
back-up. At the time it had seemed prudent and, anyway, he'd meant
to be gone before it came to that.

Meant
to
, he thought now, walking quick through
the darkened rooms, heading for the comm room and the
pinbeam.
Meant to isn't
'will.
'

He'd put a life in danger. Might have put a
life in danger. If the first message had gotten through. If she
hadn't just read it and laughed.

I'll come for
you
, she whispered from memory, the tears
running her face and her eyes steady on his. He moved faster now,
surefooted in the dark. She'd come. She'd promised. Unless
something radical had happened in her life, altering her entirely
from the woman he had known--Midj Rolanni kept her
promises.

He'd had no right to pull
her in on this.
Especially
this. Even as a contingency back-up that was never
going to be called into play. No right at all.

He slapped the wall as he strode into the
comm center. The lights came up, showing the room empty--but he was
hearing things now. Noises on his back path. The sound, maybe, of a
door being forced.

Fingers quick and steady, he called up the
'beam, fed in the ID of the receiver. The noises were closer
now--heavy feet, somebody swearing. Somewhere in one of the outer
rooms, glass shattered shrilly.

He typed, heard feet in the
room beyond, hit
send
, cleared the log, and spun, hands up and palms showing
empty.

"If you're looking for the High Judge," he
said to man holding the gun in the doorway. "He's not home."

* * *

VASHON NOT FINDING anything
about to blow down in
Skeedaddle's
innards, and the vent upgrade going more smoothly
than the man himself had expected, Midj was back on-board in good
order inside of eight local days.

She stowed her kit and initiated a systems
check, easing into the pilot's chair with a sigh of relief. The
ship was quiet, the only noises those she knew so well that they
didn't register with her anymore, except as a general sense of
everything operating as it should. Of all being right in her world,
enclosed and constrained as it was.

When she ran with a 'hand--never with a
partner, not after Kore--the noises necessarily generated by
another person sharing the space would distract and disorient her
at first, but pretty soon became just another voice in the overall
song of the ship.

And whenever circumstances had her on-port
for any length of time, she came back to the ship with relief her
overriding emotion, only too eager to lower the hatch and shut out
the din of voices, machinery and weather.

Hers. Safe. Comfortable.
Familiar. Down to the ancient
Vacation on
Incomparable Panore
holocard Kore'd given
her as a promise after one particularly hard trade run.

She'd thought before now that maybe it was
time to start charting the course of her retirement. Not that she
was old, though some days she felt every Standard she'd lived had
been two. But she did have a certain responsibility to her ship,
which could be expected to outlive a mere human's span--hell, it
had already outlived two captains, and there wasn't any reason it
wouldn't outlast her.

She ought to take up a
second--a couple of the cousins were hopeful, so she'd heard. The
time to train her replacement was while she was still in her prime,
so control could be eased over gradual, with her giving more of her
attention to TerraTrade, while the captain-to-be took over ship
duty, until one day the change was done, as painless as could be
for everyone. That's how Berl took
Skeedaddle
over from Mam, who had
gone back to the planet she'd been born to for her retired years,
and near as Midj had ever seen on her infrequent visits, missed
neither space nor ship.

Berl, now. Midj shook her
head, her eyes watching the progress of the systems check across
the board. In a universe without violence--in a universe without
the Juntavas--Berl would've been standing captain yet, and his baby
sister maybe trading off some other ship. Maybe she'd been running
back-up on
Skeedaddle
, though that wasn't the likeliest scenario, her and her
brother having gotten along about as well as opinionated and
high-tempered sibs ever did.

Still and all, he hadn't
deserved what had come to him; and she hadn't wanted the ship that
bad, having found a post that suited her on the Zar family ship.
Suited her for a number of reasons, truth told, only one of them
being the younger son, who came on as her partner once she'd
understood Berl was really dead, and
Skeedaddle
was hers.

Full circle.

The board beeped; systems checked out clean,
which was nothing more than she'd expected. She had a cold pad
spoke for at the public yard; some meetings set up across the next
couple days--couple of independents on-port she still needed to get
to regarding their views on TerraTrade's proposed "small trade"
policies. She'd write that report before she lifted, send it on to
Lezly, in case....

In case.

Well.

She reached to the board, opened eyes and
ears, began to tap in the code for the office at the public
yard--and stopped, fingers frozen over the keypad.

In the top left corner of the board, away
from everything else on the board, a yellow light glowed. Pinbeam
message waiting, that was.

Most likely it was TerraTrade business,
though she couldn't immediately call to mind anything urgent enough
to require a 'beam. Still, it happened. That's why emergencies were
called emergencies.

She tapped the button, the message screen
lit, sender ID scrolled--not a code she recognized, off-hand--and
then the message.

Situation's changed. Don't come. K

* * *

THE ROOM WAS SOFTLY lit, his chair
comfortable. For the moment, there were no restraints, other than
those imposed by the presence of the woman across the table from
him.

"Where is the High Judge, Mr. Zar?"

Her voice was courteous, even gentle,
despite having asked this selfsame question at least six times in
the last few hours.

"Evaluation tour, is what he told me," he
answered, letting some frustration show.

"An evaluation tour," his interlocutor
repeated, a note of polite disbelief entering her cool voice. "What
sort of evaluation?"

"Of the other judges," he said, and sighed
hard, showing her his empty hands turned palm up on his knee. "He
was going to visit them on the job, see how they were doing, talk
to them. It's a regular thing he does, every couple Standards."
That last at least was true.

"I see." She nodded. He didn't know her
name--she hadn't told him one, and she wasn't somebody he knew. She
had a high, smooth forehead, a short brush of pale hair and eyes
hidden by dark glasses. One of Grom Trogar's own--his sister, for
all Kore knew or cared.

What mattered was that she
could make his life very unhappy, not to say short, unless he could
convince her he was short on brains
and
info.

"It seems very odd to me," she said now,
conversationally, "that the High Judge would embark on such a tour
without his pilot."

They'd been over this ground, too.

"I'm a courier pilot," he said, keeping a
visible lid on most of his frustration; "not a big ship pilot. I
fly courier work, small traders, that kind of thing. I stay here,
in case I'm needed."

She hesitated; he could almost taste her
weighing the question of the rest of the household's whereabouts
against his own actions. Questions regarding his actions won
out.

"You went to the courier shed this
afternoon, is that correct?"

"Yes," he said, a little snappish.

"Why?" Getting a little snappish,
herself.

"I had a 'beam from the Judge, with
instructions."

"Instructions to lift?"

"Yes."

"And yet you didn't lift, Mr. Zar. I wonder
why not."

He shrugged, taking it careful here. "There
was a guard on the door. It smelled wrong, so I went back to the
house and sent a 'beam to the Judge."

"I see. Which guard?"

He had no reason to protect the woman who'd
been waiting for him. On the other hand, he had no reason to tell
this woman the truth.

"Nobody I'd seen before."

She shook her head, but let that line go,
too. Time enough to ask the question again, later.

"Once more, Mr. Zar--where is the High
Judge?"

"I told you--on evaluation tour."

"Where is Natesa the Assassin?"

She was trying to throw him off. He gave an
irritable shrug. "How the hell do I know? You think a courier
assigns Judges?"

"Hm. What was the destination of the lift
you did not make?"

He shook his head. "High Judge's business,
ma'am. I'm not to disclose that without his say. If you want to
'beam him and get his OK...."

She laughed, very softly, and leaned back in
her chair, sliding her dark glasses off and holding them lightly
between the first and middle fingers of her right hand. Her eyes
were large and pale gray, pupils shrinking to pinpoints in the dim
light.

"You are
good
, Mr. Zar--my
compliments. Unfortunately, I think you are not quite the dull
fellow you play so well. We both know what happens next, I think?
Unless there is something you wish to tell me?"

He waited, a beat, two....

She shook her head--regretfully, he thought,
and extended a long hand to touch a button on her side of the
table. The door behind her slid open, admitting two men, one
carrying a case, the other a gun.

The woman rose, languidly, and motioned them
forward. Kore felt his stomach tighten.

"Mr. Zar has decided that a dose of the drug
is required to aid his memory, gentlemen. I'll be back in ten
minutes."

* * *

DON'T COME....

Midj stared at the message, then
laughed--the first real laugh she had in--gods, a Standard.