Price of Ransom Read online

  “Who did your orders come from?” Lily asked. The self-possession of her voice seemed uncanny on the tense bridge.

  Vanov smiled. He made it an ugly expression. “Comrade Kuan-yin sent us.”

  “Of course,” Lily echoed. Her head was still canted to keep the Mule in her peripheral vision. “With orders to kill the five of us and deal with the rest as you see fit.”

  “Exactly. I’m glad we understand each other, Comrade Heredes.”

  “Ransome,” said Lily. “My name is Ransome.”

  “Comrade Vanov!” said the soldier by nav, surprised. He was staring at Pinto in his stillstrap. “They’re still running nav.”

  “I told you to turn the console off,” snapped Vanov.

  “But Comrade, I did,” insisted the soldier.

  “Then it’s impossible,” broke in Comrade Trey. “You can’t run vectors on manual.”

  In two strides Vanov closed the distance between himself and Lily and wrenched her arm up behind her back. She began to twist away.

  “Kill the other four,” he ordered. Lily froze. The soldiers hesitated.

  “Wait—” began Comrade Trey.

  Vanov pressed the muzzle of his pistol against Lily’s ear. “Take this ship off nav.”

  In the instant of indecision before anyone could act, the air rank with the scent of confusion and fear, stained with the salt of Lia’s tears and the heavy aroma of Jenny’s blood and the unexpected pungency of Vanov’s rabid hatred, Hawk could not smell any emotion in Lily at all. It was as if she was already dead, her essence fled, gone, torn from him forever.

  The horror of losing her paralyzed him. He did not even act when two soldiers put their hands on him, when he felt the shift of their bodies as they slowly—or slowly it seemed to him, caught in this moment, strung out beyond ordinary time—raised their weapons. The ghosts of the Forlorn Hope’s lost crew crowded the bridge, their fragrance overwhelming him, tenuous and yet stronger now than it had ever been before.

  Lily caught Hawk’s gaze with hers and blinked twice, deliberately. The pistol against her head smelled of cold, unfeeling steel. Her hair hid its muzzle where Vanov held it thrust against her ear.

  “Five seven two,” hissed the Mule. “Break.”

  “You bitch!”

  They went through just as Vanov pulled the trigger.

  4 Old Secrets

  BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD AGONY howl pain blackness blood blood

  And came out.

  “Perfect,” hissed the Mule.

  There was silence on the bridge. No answer at all.

  Pinto unclipped his chin harness and twisted to look at the same time as the Mule turned in its chair.

  It was hard to make sense of what was on the bridge. The first movement that had form was that of Lily slowly rising to her feet. Her face was pale with shock. Blood spattered her clothing. She saw first Pinto, then the Mule, and last Bach, and as if they gave her stability, she took one step forward and stared around the bridge.

  The step brought her foot into a heavy obstacle. As one, she and the Mule and Pinto looked down. Bach sang something muted.

  It was Comrade Vanov’s body. Scarlet stained his Jehanist whites. His throat had been ripped open. Blood still flowed, pooling in the crook of one bent arm.

  Behind, someone began to retch violently. Jenny moaned, and stirred. A tiny voice said, “Momma,” and began to cry.

  Lily eased her boot away from Vanov’s corpse and turned slowly to survey what lay about her: Lia standing in blank-faced shock, Gregori sobbing beside her; Yehoshua gripping his chair back so hard his knuckles were mottled white; Jenny crumpled under one console, trying to lift her head. Nguyen had fainted. Finch was throwing up.

  Bodies littered the floor like so much dross. The marbled deck was awash in blood. It was hard to imagine that fifteen bodies could produce so much of it.

  All the soldiers were dead. Their throats had been ripped out.

  Not all: by Finch, Hawk stood, holding the woman Trey by a portion of her tunic. Her face had the sheen of terror. She was too paralyzed by fright and shock to move. Her eyes were locked on Hawk’s face like any helpless being stares at the monster that has entrapped it.

  Hawk’s expression was too blank to be human. It had an alien cast, as if some other creature possessed him. He looked horrifying. His clothes bore huge spatters of blood. His hands were red. As she watched, a single drop coalesced off one palm and fell to shatter on the floor. More red spattered his blue hair, like some cosmetic pattern in a new fashion. But worst of all, his face was streaked with it, fresh blood, and most of it around his lips.

  “She smells of Robbie,” he said, as if explaining something, his voice both hoarsely his own, and yet entirely foreign. He opened his hand off her jacket and without a sound collapsed unconscious to the floor.

  Comrade Trey began to shake, and cough, and then to cry uncontrollably. But she remained standing, because to sink down would bring her closer to Hawk, and she had not the ability to move any farther away from him.

  The Mule hissed, a long, sibilant sound expressing sheer disbelief and revulsion.

  Lily took another step, back to the captain’s chair and the ship’s com.

  “To those soldiers under Comrade Vanov’s command still remaining on this ship. This is Captain Ransome speaking. Your commander is dead. Put down your weapons and return to your shuttle. If you do so without harming any of this crew, or any part of this ship, we will let you leave unharmed. If you do not, at whatever cost to us, we’ll kill you all.”

  A pause, snap, and reply. “Min Ransome? Be it truly you? This is Paisley. I be still in Engineering. I hid.”

  “Paisley?” Lily glanced at Pinto. “Did you run the vector coordinates through Engineering?”

  “Yes, min.”

  Lily did not reply for a moment. Pinto smiled slightly. The Mule hissed, sta-ish laughter.

  “Damn my eyes,” Lily murmured. “Stay at your station, Paisley. Well done.” She flipped com to all-channels and waited for what was left of the Jehanist troopers to reply. “Yehoshua, collect their guns. Starting with her.” She made an economical gesture toward Comrade Trey.

  Looking grim and not a little queasy, Yehoshua began to pick his way through the corpses.

  “Finch.”

  He looked up at the sound of Lily’s voice, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes looked glazed.

  “See to Jenny.”

  “But—”

  “Finch.”

  Keeping his gaze averted from Hawk’s unconscious form, he complied.

  “Mule. Carry Hawk into my cabin. Clean him up as well as you can.” As the Mule stood up, showing no expression whatsoever at the command, she reconsidered. “And take Pinto and Yehoshua as guards. Armed. Bach, monitor all systems.”

  Ship’s com snapped to life.

  “Captain? This be Rainbow. Be you there?”

  “Yes. What’s your status?”

  “Ya comrades gave theyselves up, Captain. We got ya weapons. There be twelve here. Shall we kill them?”

  “No. Detail a group to escort those twelve to their shuttle and seal them in. I want you and the others to first make sure the rest of our crew is safe and returned to their stations. I need Flower up here, and you, and as many as you can spare from guarding the shuttle. We’ll have two prisoners for detention, and I’m afraid some rather ugly”—she hesitated, and refrained from glancing around the bridge—“cleanup to do.”

  “Sure, Captain,” Rainbow responded. Her voice sounded incongruously cheerful over com. “We got ya bastards, didna we?”

  “Get moving,” snapped Lily, because to reply to Rainbow’s question was too painful. “And Yehoshua,” she added, just as he was about to leave, escorting the Mule with its terrible burden, “take Aliasing and Comrade Trey to detention. I’ll want to speak with them later.”

  Lia began to cry again, but she did not resist as Yehoshua took her arm—none too gently—to lead her away. Comrade Trey
followed dully, looking if anything relieved to be escaping the carnage.

  Gregori gave Lia a long, piercing stare as she left. She would not look at him—at anyone. But once the bridge doors sighed together, concealing her, he sidled carefully around the bodies and knelt by Finch. Didn’t say anything, just crouched there, face pale and frightened.

  Finch had turned his back on the careless litter of death behind him as he checked over Jenny’s injuries, but he essayed a glance at Gregori—risking a glimpse of the dead soldiers—and patted the boy with tentative solicitude on one arm. “She’ll be all right,” he murmured. “Just a couple days’ rest, and this arm will have to heal.”

  “But all the bloods—” Gregori whispered.

  Finch winced, and then realized the boy meant on his mother’s head and face. “Head wounds always bleed a lot,” he explained, and winced again, thinking of their throats. Unconsciously, he lifted a hand to brush at his own neck, and he shuddered.

  “I need to get her down to Medical,” he snapped, desperately wanting to get out of the bridge. “We’ll have to observe for concussion.”

  Gregori wiped away tears with the back of one hand.

  “Holy Void.” Nguyen was finally getting his first unadulterated look at the bridge. “What happened?”

  “Nguyen.” Lily’s voice was taut. “Help Finch get Jenny down to Medical. Take Gregori with you.”

  In his haste to get out as quickly as possible, Nguyen did not even bother to reply.

  But when they left, she was alone with Bach and fifteen mutilated, bloody bodies. The bridge reeked of death. She was almost afraid to move from her haven in the center of the bridge.

  “I can’t believe he had this in him,” she whispered. “What kind of creatures are they?”

  Bach began to sing softly.

  Blute nur, du Weber Herze!

  Ach, ein Kind, das du erzogen

  Das an deiner Brust gesogen

  Droht den Pfleger zu ermorden,

  Denn es ist zur Schlange worden.

  “Bleed on, dear heart!

  Ah, the child that you raised,

  That sucked at your breast,

  Threatens to murder its guardian

  For it has become a serpent.”

  On his final note the doors shunted aside to reveal Rainbow and six Ridanis in full mercenary gear. Rainbow took a step in, then halted, staring. The others crowded up behind her.

  “What happened?” she asked, awed by the savagery of the scene.

  “I underestimated him,” Lily said, thinking of her signal to Kyosti—she had meant: disable them while we’re in the window. “I never meant this to happen.”

  Rainbow shook her head. “I seen it in his eyes, min,” she said sagely. “He were ya hard type, that one. It be what he meant to do to us, b’ain’t it? I say they deserved it, ya square.”

  Behind her, the other Ridanis murmured agreement. Lily realized belatedly that Rainbow was talking about Vanov, not Hawk, and found she could not frame a reply.

  “Sure, Captain,” Rainbow continued, a little solicitously. “Be it sure you got ya other arrangements to work out. We can clean this up. Sure, and we hae seen as bad, most of us, in our time. Ya Immortals done as bad to us tattoos at Roanoak and Bistro Station.”

  “You couldn’t have been there,” Lily protested, remembering Roanoak. Remembering Kyosti at the clinic, healing with the same sure touch with which he killed.

  Rainbow shrugged. “We hear.”

  The Ridanis stood aside to let her pass. It took her a moment to realize that they meant her to leave, to spare her the sight of their cleaning up. With great effort, she picked a careful path around the corpses. Paused by Rainbow, giving her a brief nod. Rainbow nodded back, and Lily left.

  She went straight to the captain’s suite, not wanting to see how the Ridanis chose to dispose of the remains. Inside, she found Yehoshua and Pinto, both armed, and the Mule, sitting uncomfortably in the couch and chair that furnished the outer room.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “Unconscious,” replied the Mule, drawing the word out into a long, sibilant flowering on the s. “I cleaned him up as best I could and discarded his clothing and left him on your bed. Was that well?”

  “Well enough,” interrupted Yehoshua in a sharp voice. “I knew he was a psychopath. Void bless us, I’ve never seen anything so horrible. He ought to be committed to an institution.”

  “Just remember,” said Pinto, drawling slightly, “that we would have all been dead. Between you and me, I’ll take that trade any day.”

  “If he indeed does have some strange ability that allows him to”—Yehoshua paused, struggling for a word to embody a concept none of them truly believed in—“exist inside a window, then he damn well could have disarmed them, couldn’t he?”

  “I’m glad he killed them,” Pinto replied with unexpected fierceness. “Vanov’s the one who killed my father, isn’t he?” He looked at Lily for confirmation, but Yehoshua replied instead, harsh words that provoked an equally heated response from Pinto. Lily heard only the tone, not their words, because a sudden flood of memory, of the last moments before they had gone through the window, choked her. Vanov had killed her.

  Pinto stopped talking. They all stopped talking, seeing her face.

  Yehoshua stood up. “Do you need to sit down?”

  She let him guide her to the chair and sit her down. “He killed me,” she said, dazed by the discovery. “He fired the pistol. I should have been dead.”

  “Who killed you?” Pinto asked.

  “Vanov,” said Yehoshua slowly, trying himself to recall the sequence of events. “I knew he had the gun against your head.”

  “Ah.” The flow of the exclamation gave it a sagacious flavor. “You have overlooked the obvious conclusion,” the Mule continued, having gained their attention. “Hawk also thought you were dead. It would explain the—severity of his reaction. He is not particularly stable, and his attachment to you is deeper than most. And he is not in any case fully human.”

  Pinto just blinked, looking confused. Lily did not reply.

  “What do you mean?” Yehoshua demanded. “He’s not ‘fully human.’”

  The Mule smiled, a peculiarly out-of-place expression on his half-sta face. “Like recognizes like,” he replied. “I knew the moment I met Hawk that he is, as I am, a half-breed.” He turned his gaze from Yehoshua’s disbelieving face to Lily’s quiet one. “But to more than that, I cannot answer.”

  Lily sat, remembering the bridge of La Belle Dame’s Sans Merci, where the aliens—what had La Belle called them? Where the je’jiri had run their prey to ground.

  The other three waited. Eventually it became clear to her that they expected an explanation. And even, perhaps, in the face of the circumstances, that they deserved one.

  “I just found out myself,” she began softly. “After Blessings. His father is human. His mother is one of an alien species called je’jiri. They’re hunters. I saw them—” She halted, unwilling to share the memory of what had happened on La Belle’s bridge. “I saw them,” she repeated, ending the sentence there. “They’re not like us.”

  “Enough like us,” said Yehoshua, “that mating could produce a child.”

  “I don’t know how that works, or how usual it is in League space to find half-breeds. But not very usual, I don’t think. The je’jiri don’t approve of it.” The comment seemed even to her ears ridiculous, a gross understatement of the bloody aftermath of their hunt. The man who had been killed on the Sans Merci had not looked so different from Comrade Vanov and his compatriots.

  “Is that why Hawk is so unstable?” Yehoshua asked, continuing to press the issue.

  Lily looked directly at him. “Yes. That’s why. His—attachment to me isn’t”—she hesitated—“It isn’t a human attachment. That’s why I can’t abandon him.”

  “So you expect us to continue serving on this ship with him running loose?” Yehoshua’s voice was rough. “After what
we’ve seen he can do?”

  “It’s true,” said Pinto, finding his voice. “I’m not sure he shouldn’t be locked up. It almost gives me sympathy for Finch.”

  The Mule hissed slightly, laughing.

  Lily stood up. “All right. I agree to keep him quarantined in my cabin until we get to League space, where I’ll hope we can find a doctor, someone who knows more about this than we do. The lock is manually coded to my imprint alone in any case. Whatever else he can do, I don’t think he can walk through walls.” She walked across the room to the door that led into the inner chamber.

  “You’re not going in there?” Yehoshua asked, amazed and horrified at once. “Alone?”

  “He won’t hurt me. It’s the one thing I am sure of.” She paused before touching the panel that would shunt the door aside. “Yehoshua. Escort Lia up here. I’m going to want to talk to her after I’ve checked on Hawk.”

  “Do you wish company?” the Mule asked unexpectedly.

  She considered the offer, but at last shook her head. “No. Thank you. This is best done alone.” She touched the panel and stepped inside the other room.

  The door sighed shut behind her. Kyosti lay on the bed. At first she thought he was asleep, but as she watched him he shifted, muttering words in too low a voice for her to make out their sense.

  She approached the foot of the bed cautiously. His eyes were shut. His head turned on the coverlet. Muted red still tipped his hair and his fingers. A slight stain streaked his jaw just below his mouth. The Mule had put him in a clean white tunic and trousers. He seemed unhealthily pale against the stark fabric. He had never seemed so pale before.

  She was about to speak his name, softly, when he abruptly sat up, so sudden and violent a movement that she jumped back, bracing herself.

  “Lily!” he cried.

  A pause, and she realized he did not see her, but was looking at something, some sight he alone could see. He was not aware of her at all.

  “I saw him and he said to me, Hypsiphrone, although you dwell outside me, follow me—”

  Lily had no idea who Kyosti thought he was talking to. His eyes had opened, and they focused on a spot halfway between the bed and the wall. His voice was low, but it had an edge on it, as if he was just clinging to the last vestiges of calm.