Skeen's Search (35 page)

Quick brilliant smile thrown at her over his shoulder, angled brow lifting, flattening, a bright-eyed fox pretending ease and doing it well, he said nothing, but kicked a hassock over to one of the bulging overstuffed chairs, flung himself into the chair and sat watching the screen, feet up, ankles crossed, hands laced together over his flat stomach.

Timka watched the Veil bands change and grow until a soft chime announced the Drop. She closed her eyes. When she was still new to this universe, she'd teased Picarefy into leaving a screen open so she could see what happened when they translated into the insplit where they whipped along at speeds that were meaningless in their immensity and absurd in the tiny numbers that named them. One light. Two. Twenty. Fifty. Once was enough. She tossed her lunch and what felt like every lunch she'd eaten for the past month. Eyes closed, the translation was quite endurable, a subtle alteration in the subliminal hum that pervaded Picarefy's shipbody when she was moving.

When Timka felt the change in the hum that meant the translation was complete, she opened her eyes and lay-watching the mother-of-pearl irridescence of the insplit. After she recovered from her nausea and nerved herself to look at the screen, Picarefy told her that the subtle shifts of color were full of information about conditions outside, but she couldn't see it; apparently it took Picarefy's peculiar virtues to make sense of the flows. Moving, she thought, on our way to the Gate. A sudden flooding of homesickness squeezed her insides into knotty strings, surprising her with its intensity. She had enjoyed herself here, she had acquaintances she could make into friends with a little time and effort. She could be whatever she wanted here and the possibilities seemed endless. This convoluted odyssey Skeen had drawn her into had taught her comforting things about her capacity for transformation, not merely the old kind, the shifts she could put her body through, but a transformation of mind and spirit, a destruction of barriers she'd once seen as impenetrable. A frightening, beckoning, dangerous, exhilarating, fascinating universe. But when she thought of the Gate and the Mountains beyond, she ached with need to be back there, a need that didn't seem to diminish with time. Lifefire, what am I going to do? Hmm. I wonder if Telka went down the Ever-Hunger's gullet or wiggled away. She frowned at the rippling shimmer on the screen and knew, surprising herself again, that she wanted to find Telka alive and strong, that she needed to face her twin and finish one way or another the battle that had started the moment their mother cast off their buds, that she was bone-deep sure of the outcome.

A sudden change in the sound. Her eyes flew to the screen, the flows were bunched into a knot of painful jags, the image rippled. A warning chime. Hastily Timka closed her eyes. Here we go again, she thought, remembering the in-and-out creep through the Veils when they were feeling their way toward Rallen. She sighed and got to her feet.

Ross looked round. “Going?”

“As you see.” Timka shrugged. “We've done this before, I think I'll sleep through it this time.”

“Good idea. Nothing will be happening for days yet.”

Belly down, teeth bared, Picarefy crept from the Veils, stalking a pack of three harriers ambling along in the insplit, sweeping the Veils' Edge with such lackluster unconcern they couldn't be expecting anything to fall into their nets. The nearest snagship was five lights off, hugging the brown half of a yellow/brown dwarf double.

Ross and Timka were on the bridge, permitted there after a stern warning that they should make themselves invisible and inaudible. Timka curled in one of the smaller chairs watching what she could see of Skeen and Tibo. They were talking in single words and long silences, grunts and gestures, something approaching a cued telepathy. It amused and amazed her that these two could meld so closely they hardly needed to talk, yet Skeen, away from Tibo, could suspect him of abandoning her and stealing her ship. The two sides of the woman wouldn't fit together, no matter how Timka shifted them about. This fascinated her; anyway, speculating about Skeen filled the emptiness of waiting time. She called up the memories she'd acquired from Skeen when she attempted to use the Min inreach on her, that long ago time (no, it was less than—the realization was a jolt that knocked Timka breathless for a moment—less than two years ago though it seemed like another lifetime) when Skeen's hand was rotting off her arm and doing a good job of slowly killing her. The uncertainties hammered into Skeen's soul during her rotten childhood had surfaced and wiped away the certainties of her mind; her trust was betrayed time after time by those who professed to care for her, who should have cared, her perceptions were constantly negated by such betrayal until she mistrusted her own judgment almost as much as she mistrusted the surfaces and professed intentions of those around her. There was a sense of kinship in the way that Skeen had managed an accommodation with herself; had devised a mode of living that seldom triggered her underlying paranoia, an accommodation much like Timka's, survivors both of them. Skeen was generous as long as she could set the terms of that generosity. Like me. She had friends that she would help without counting the cost as long as that help didn't threaten her independence. Like me, the now-me. She accepted with comity all beings who drifted into her notice, but few got close to her. Tibo? Yes. Watching that wordless coordination, Timka had to concede an intimacy of mind between those two as complete as any intimacy of the body. Even so, how much would Skeen grieve if Tibo left her? Hard to say. The one being, though, that she'd ever really mourn was Picarefy, who was child, sister, lover, friend, clone in a complex and peculiar mix. Fascinating.

Picarefy tasted the harrier's probes as they slid unknowing over the Ykx shield and used these to visualize the harriers without having to send her own probes out and possibly trigger alarms aboard them. Skeen and Tibo watched the ghostly green lines drifting about in the center of the screen, the intensity of their concentration visible in shoulder and neck.

Tibo snorted. “Sloppy.”

Skeen nodded, one short sharp jerk of her head. “Cidder'll have that chirk's hide.”

The formation was looser than it should have been, with the high third several degrees out of position. Even Timka could see that none of the crews expected a ship to come out of the Veil and didn't really care whether it did or not.

Picarefy crept closer. Hours passed. Slow stretched out hours, not a sound on the bridge except the ragged breathing of the four and the subliminal hum from Picarefy, on and on, edging closer closer, interminable, drawn-out stalk, sometimes it seemed they were running and running and getting nowhere as in a nightmare, tension climbing high and higher, dropsical distended instants bulking in Timka's stomach, hands wrapped tight about the chairarms, worry worry will the shield hold? It worked against the Kliu Berej, but about a tiny lander not a thing that massed like Picarefy. Would that make a difference? No answer from Picarefy, none from Skeen or Tibo, no comment from Lipitero before she crossed to the transport. Closer. Closer. Until the screen could no longer hold the pack and divided into three cells. Until the jecter fronds of the harriers filled those cells.

“Missiles ready.” Picarefy's voice broke the silence. Timka twitched. The pleasant countertenor sounded harsh; she could swear the ship loathed what she was doing though she was resigned to the necessity of doing it. “Two full, one ten-percent. Which one gets the tenner?”

Skeen flipped a hand at Tibo. Unlike Rostico Burn (who was doing an internal wardance but had just sufficient tact to keep his whooping to himself), she wasn't enjoying this stalk; dipping in and out of tight places, relying on wiliness and skill was something she did with pleasure and artistry, but here she didn't trust her instincts and passed the decision to Tibo.

“High third,” he said. “That's apt to be the leader; he's the one you want able to squeal. It's likely his message rat is pre-targeted to the snagship orbiting the dwarf and that snagger will split over here in a blink or less. Those devils are fast, Pic, and Cidder will have the best of them on watch.”

“Oh, is that so?”

A bark of laughter from Skeen. “I mentioned that sarcasm, didn't I, Pic?”

“Could be. Could be I didn't happen to agree with the context. Um. Click home your crashwebs. I'll shoot, roll and drop, that's no problem, but shield, acceleration, lifesupport will take all the oomph I can put out, little niceties like g-normal will be on hold for the duration. Yes, yes, I will remember that you're fragile creatures, but I won't be worrying about your comfort, not right then.”

“Timka. Ross. You heard? Need help? No. Good. Pic, goose 'em and let's get the hell out.”

“I hear and obey.”

Picarefy collapsed the Shield, spat the three missiles, dropped into the insplit without waiting to see what happened; she pulled the Ykx shield around her again and built to her top speed as rapidly as she could without breaching her sides and turning her passengers into goo. If the crew in the crippled harrier was reasonably competent, they would take no-time to pinpoint the source of those missiles and come after her claws out. There was no way to be sure the weakened missile would do sufficient damage to prevent the harrier from following. For a minute or so she couldn't be sure that she hit any of them, she was suicidally close when she released the missiles; there'd be maybe a breath between alarm and explosion, but if Mala Fortuna was riding her back, that'd be time enough for an alert crewman to hit the panic button and lift his ship into realspace with half a chance of leaving the missile behind. Picarefy didn't expect such alertness and quick reflexes, but stranger things had happened and she didn't want to chance them happening to her.

One minute. Distortion in the flow, two knots. Dead ships.

Two minutes. Diminishing whine. A message rat on its way.

Three minutes. Weak probes ranging, spherical pattern, tips barely touching the surface of the shield. One harrier, crippled, going nowhere.

Five minutes. She eased off. Sparks of relief flooded her circuits as the strain passed out of her. She released the brake on the argrav, started the repair mice checking on her brain and body, started the medasource playing through Skeen's body (this was something she'd added without telling Skeen, the medasource instruments and program were costly, putting it mildly, and Skeen would have spent years arguing about the need for it when she already had the Autodoc, itchy because Picarefy would be intruding more deeply than ever into her life, she knew Skeen through and through, in a way she was Skeen, Skeen's thought patterns were incorporated in her own). She managed some sneaky repair, careful to do nothing Skeen would notice, then moved on to Tibo and Rostico Burn. By the time she was ready for Timka, the Min had clicked open the web, flipped through a pair of shifts and was pulling on her kimono.

Skeen unclipped the web and sat up. “Status, Pic?”

“Minor damage, a few unimportant breaks; the mice will have them sewn up in a minute or two. We'll be on target for the second hit coming up ninety minutes.”

“The pack?”

“No pursuit, two flares on the field, whine of a rat, probes from the crip, less than halfpower. I'd say we got three hits and the news out as planned.”

“Slickery Pic, hah!”

The threepack of harriers Tibo and Picarefy had elected as her second target had been patrolling between two micro clusters near several long thin pseudopods extending from the main body of the Veil; the nearest snagship was over ten lights off, the pack was the last in the line of harriers, it was roughly in the direction of The Shoals, everything they were looking for. Unfortunately, by the time Picarefy got close enough pick up their probes, the ships had gone off patrol, had surfaced to realspace and were drifting near a red giant, positioned just inside Teegah's Limit, nose out. To get behind them she would have to surface and swing round the sun, and after the strike, she couldn't split without another long run. She hadn't picked up a rat trace, but that was such a chancy occurrence, she wasn't bothered by the lack. She knew the pack had got a warning and was waiting for her. That all the other packs would be waiting like these.

Skeen looked at the schematic and cursed. “Cidder!” she snarled.

Tibo was gazing intently at the ships. “Mmm.”

Picarefy threw an inset onto the screen, showing the ships in relation to the star and the sphere of Teegah's Limit. “Quick little viper,” she said. “I'm picking up feelers from three snagships, all of them moving from their parking orbits, two coming toward us, one going away. I assume they're closing in on the harrier packs.”

Skeen ran her hand through her hair. “We wanted him to notice us, I say we've done enough, let's get out of …”

Picarefy jumped in before she finished. “No, that's wrong. If we don't hit him again, he'll start seining the place, but give him a line, he'll be on it, coming at us with everything he's got, giving Virgin and Hopeless a reasonably clear run. That's what you were setting up, Skeen, you might as well follow through.”

Reluctantly Skeen agreed; they had to twist Cidder's tail again. “No tricks this time,” she said. “Pic, those missiles go with a full load.”

“Oh, yes, no playing with that pack,” Picarefy said, fervor in her voice, “Bona Fortuna bless us.”

Tibo passed a hand across his face, cleared his throat. “The way the pack is positioned, you can see they are waiting for you to come out of the starglare should you be running this line. Cidder has to have some idea about the Ykx Shield seeing what happened on Pillory, but he hasn't had the time or data to bust it, so he's trying to outfox it. Either him or the Lead in the boss harrier. Lead knows he can't see you before you spit the missiles, but I'd bet the family jewels he's got someone's thumb on the panic button in each of those ships, with the orders to squirt past the Limit and drop out the instant anything at all appears on their screens. Him or Cidder, one of them has guessed that you have to lift the Shield before you can fire. Drop out, switch ends, surface again, take out the missiles and pin you against the sun. With a little luck the Lead can do all of that. Look at them, you can almost smell the confidence. Hmm. Which brings up another point. Pic, you think this is one of Cidder's Fancies? You think he guessed Skeen would break out this direction and put his prime pack here to catch her?”