Bechimo
Dock A
Jacket was apparently a metaphor for more dock-worthy attire, including proper leathers and boots. Cousin Theo was settling her too-large jacket as she joined him in the galley.
“All good,” she said. “Let’s go.”
So, they went, just the two of them, down the ramp and up the dock at a brisk pace, Theo’s bootheels striking the decking firmly.
Not that it likely was just the two of them, Jen Sin thought. The ship surely accompanied his captain, if the whispers he had heard about the ship when it was a-building had any basis in fact.
“No train?” Theo asked, her voice disturbing this line of speculation. She stamped on the track laid into the deck.
“Lorith remembers a train, but says that it vanished between one…sleep and another, long before I arrived here.”
They walked in silence for a few steps before Theo said, “Why?”
“Forgive me—which why in particular?”
She gave him a sideways look and a half-grin.
“I guess there might be more than one, given family. Are you one of the trouble-prone yos’Pheliums?”
He moved his shoulders.
“Who are we to use as our pattern-card?”
She laughed.
“Right. In particular, I’m wondering why you arrived here. Val Con’s notes just said that you’ve been here, on Tinsori Light, for two hundred Standards, but not why. Were you sent to”—she waved her hand energetically about, possibly indicating the Light entire—“be a light keeper?”
“No, I was sent to Delium, to deliver a packet. This would be during the time that Clan Sinan imagined itself the sole owner of the sector, and all the trade routes, with Rinork working their mischief along two lines at once, looking as always for the best advantage to themselves.
“And here was Clan Vaazemir, Delium’s premier clan, strenuously disputing Sinan’s claims and excesses, caught in the web of Rinork’s mischief, and what should they do but call upon their old ally, Korval?”
He closed his eyes briefly, seeing the woman—his supposed contact—waiting for him, calm and smooth-faced. The table, ready with glasses and bottle—the uncorked bottle, heard her again say the lines that had not been scripted, sealing her own death, allowing him—allowing the packet—a chance to avoid capture.
He took a hard breath.
“To shorten the tale considerably—there was treachery. I took damage returning to my ship, and it became…necessary to hit the presets—the merest blind stab”—because of the blood running into his eyes, more than half-dead as he had been—“and it brought me here. I mean to say, to Tinsori Light.”
Theo turned her head to stare at him.
“The emergency safe-port presets?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “And, no, Cousin, I do not know why those coords were included among the set. Perhaps Korval once had an ally here, though neither name nor clan-sign were familiar to Lorith.”
They walked along in silence for some time, Theo apparently deep in thought, though he supposed she could be in conversation with the ship.
They came to the main intersection and he took the right-hand hall, Theo still silent at his side.
They had almost gained the secondary intersection when she spoke again.
“Val Con’s information was that you sent a coded message that meant you were…suiciding”—she said the word as if it were in questionable taste—“and that the delm should strike ship and pilot from the list of Korval’s…assets.”
“That is correct.”
“But you could have sent for help!” she said. “Clan Korval and its allies could have sent dozens! They—”
“To have done so would have provided Tinsori Light with an army,” he interrupted. “I killed my ship because it was untrustworthy, having been repaired by Tinsori Light. I stayed because I, too, had been repaired by Tinsori Light, and was equally untrustworthy, though I believed I could assist in preventing it from conquering the universe—or even a small system.”
Theo was frowning. “It was an Independent Logic. Negotiations—”
“It was an Independent Logic built by the Great Enemy. Old Tech. Surely, the Scouts still warn against Old Tech, and deactivate it when they can? Such things are—insidious.”
“The Scouts tried to confiscate Bechimo as Old Tech,” Theo said sharply, and seemed about to say more, but stopped, face arrested, very much as if she were listening to a voice only she could hear.
The ship was calming her, Jen Sin thought. Good. They had both spoken with more heat than was wise, given their lineage, and it was well done, that neither had shown a blade.
“The Department of the Interior,” Theo said, sounding subdued, “used Old Tech to—to injure one of my crew. We brought him back to health—to good health—but he’d been a field Scout and—that’s not something he’ll be able to recover.”
Her ship assaulted, and her crew injured. Small wonder Cousin Theo was raw on that edge.
“Every coin has two sides,” he said, gently. “Allow Tinsori Light to have been the obverse of Bechimo.”
She took a deep breath, and nodded sharply. “Agreed. So you stayed—”
“I could not go—I had no ship,” he said. “And while two guards against what mischief the Light might produce was trivial, two was more efficient than one, and far less dangerous than a dozen. Two guards may stand back-to-back; one may sleep and one may guard, lowering the risk of error brought by exhaustion; another person to talk to—even so little as that—increases the efficiency of the watch.”
“I hadn’t thought—” she began, but a sound had caught Jen Sin’s ear. He raised a hand, stopped, and turned.
Around the corner burst a pale blue jitney, surely traveling at or near its top speed. Hazenthull nor’Phelium was apparently piloting, with Tolly Jones crammed into the bench beside her.
Theo stepped to the left side of the hall. Jen Sin remained where he was. He saw Hazenthull’s teeth in a full battle grin before she reached to the control board.
The jitney came to a gentle halt thirty centimeters from his leading foot.
“Light Keeper!” Tolly Jones said with a brilliant smile. “Good to see you! Cap’n Theo—the same, ma’am.”
“I see that Researcher Veeoni came prepared for every contingency,” Jen Sin said. “May one ask your target? Surely not the sealed hall.”
“Not quite that far. Seignur Veeoni had it come into her head that there’s something she might find innerestin’ in one of the rooms just ’round the corner from the breach hall, so she sent Haz to fetch it. I’m along in case whatever it might be is too heavy for her to lift.”
“Or in case it may need persuasion,” Jen Sin murmured. Tolly Jones gave him a nod.
“A small winged bot was found in the deep core by the cleaning crew,” Jen Sin said. “It escaped into the station at large.”
“Heard that. We’ll keep a lookout.”
“Thank you. Also, we have ships, cargo, and work crews incoming. They will be docking in a few hours.”
“Hadn’t heard that. We’ll keep a lookout there, too.”
Jen Sin inclined his head.
Tolly Jones patted the side of the jitney.
“You folks for the sealed hall?”
“Indeed. Captain Waitley wishes to inspect it.”
“Why not?” Tolly said, and pointed over his shoulder. “Pair o’perfectly good seats back there. We can give you a lift as far as we’re going.”
“I will,” Hazenthull said, “moderate the speed. We were conducting a capabilities inventory.”
“Very wise,” Jen Sin said gravely. “A pilot must know her craft.” He glanced across the hall.
“Cousin Theo, will you take your ease?”
Theo took a breath, shrugged, and moved toward the jitney. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
Hazenthull’s notion of moderate fell on the pilot side of the line, which was fair, Jen Sin thought, as she was ferrying pilots.
Theo shifted on the seat beside him, and he turned his head to meet her eyes.
“What would you have done, if she hadn’t stopped?”
Jen Sin raised an eyebrow.
“Jumped, of course. What would you have done, if she had veered left?”
Theo sighed.
“Jumped,” she admitted. “But, you challenged her.”
Ah. This was what came of being nurtured by scholars in an orderly environment, where melant’i was perhaps not accounted sternly, if at all.
“I merely asserted my intention to remain where I was,” he said.
Theo blinked, drew breath…
He raised his hand, and she exhaled.
“I am light keeper,” he said, “and have dominion in my own halls. Hazenthull challenged that. It may have been in jest, but even so, it required an immediate answer. Every challenge is an equation set, Cousin. Hazenthull’s question was ‘Will you yield?’ My answer was, ‘No. You will yield.’”
“And she did. But what if she hadn’t been joking?”
“Did we not just agree between us that the prudent course in such a case would have been to jump?”
“Yes, we did, but that would have—escalated the situation, and—”
The jitney bore, strongly, to the left, curtailing conversation. Straightening, it picked up speed briefly, then the engine’s whine cut and they drifted gently to a stop.
“End of the line,” Tolly Jones called over his shoulder.
Jen Sin stood up and walked to the pilot’s side.
“My thanks for your courtesy,” he said.
Hazenthull inclined her head.
“I would offer a ride back,” she said, “but Seignur Veeoni was not able to give me even approximate dimensions.”
“If it’s here at all,” Tolly Jones added. “Want us to swing up to the seal, if we got room and you’re not back by the time we’re ready to go?”
“It would be a kindness,” Jen Sin said, around a cool shiver of—memory, perhaps. He moved around to the front of the jitney, frowning at the hatch with its diagonal green stripe. There was something there, though a specific incident did not arise. “It is this room?”
“Yes,” Hazenthull said. “Seignur Veeoni was certain.”
“As always,” Jen Sin murmured. The feeling had faded. He sighed, felt the presence of someone near, and turned his head to find Tolly Jones standing at his side.
“Problem?”
“Nothing so definite. Take care, Mentor.”
“Always,” he said cheerfully, and turned away. “Hey, Haz, did Seignur Veeoni give us anything specific? If there’s eighteen crates are we bringing ’em all?”
“Should we stay?” Theo asked, arriving in her turn at his side.
Jen Sin moved his shoulders. “Likely not. You had wanted to see the seals.”
“I did. But if there’s danger—”
“Hazenthull and Mentor Jones are very efficient people. More, they are a seasoned security team. If there is danger, and they are required to act, our presence may impede them.”
He began to walk down the hall.
“Because we’re not a team,” Theo said.
“Because, we are not their team,” he corrected, gently. Surely, he thought, she knew these things.
Still, it seemed for a moment that she might make another argument to stay. She did glance over her shoulder at Tolly Jones and Hazenthull nor’Phelium, bent together over the tablet in his hand, then stretched her legs to reach his side.
Abruptly, she spoke.
“I’m not…experienced in the kinds of decisions you’ve had to make in order to—survive Tinsori Light,” she said slowly. “It must be hard to always have to be conscious about what might give an enemy the advantage. I’m thinking about what you said, about not giving the Light an army.”
Only see the child, how serious! The Old Light had nothing to do with her, and he was glad of it.
“It was what came to me,” he said. “Perhaps I am one of the trouble-prone yos’Pheliums, after all.”
She laughed, and that was better.
“Just through here,” he said, putting his hand against the hatch with its orange warning stripe.
Emergency dims came on when they entered the hallway, waking abundant shadows. The air was cool, but reasonably fresh. At the end of the hall, not so very distant from the hatch, the cermasteel seal glowed an unsettling grey-green in the low light.
“Lorith and I did not often come this way,” he said, as they approached the seal. “If we had been able to establish a regular schedule—” He moved his shoulders and let that drift away. “Being as we were, we trusted what the instruments told us.”
“And the instruments reported that the seals held.” Theo nodded. “Tinsori Light would’ve been invested in that.”
“Precisely.”
“What I was wondering,” Theo said, continuing forward, her attention on the seal—
A section of the left wall somewhat forward of her silently slid aside, and a bot stepped into the hall.
It was a very simple bot: unadorned, articulated girders, small motors at the knees and elbows, a blank mask atop crosspiece shoulders.
It was holding an energy rifle, which it raised, aiming—
“Theo,” Jen Sin said sharply. “Stop. Do not move.”
Her head turned toward the bot. Perhaps the ship had warned her. She stopped, and she did not move.
“Yes,” he murmured, and moved himself, forward and to the right, making certain his bootheels made audible contact with the decking. The bot turned, weapon following him.
Excellent.
“Tocohl,” he said, calmly, and never moving his eyes from the bot, “please make contact with the guard in the breach hall.”
“I can see the guard in the hallway camera,” Tocohl said, the old speaker making her voice scratchy and unbeautiful. “I do not see it in the station systems. All of the indie circuits are closed.” There was a pause. “Jen Sin—I can’t contact it.”
Which meant, Jen Sin understood, that she could not deactivate it. He had feared as much.
“That’s all right, though,” Theo said, softly, her lips scarcely moving, her posture relaxed where she stood. “Because we’re here to help; to upgrade systems and repair damage. There’s no need to hurt us, and every reason to help us.”
“That is correct,” Jen Sin murmured, moving steadily to the right, drawing the eye of the weapon with him, away from Theo. “I am the light keeper. It is my duty and my intention to keep the station as it deserves, with care, respect and attention to the safety of all.”
He moved forward, angling in now, keeping the bot’s attention on him, away from Theo. Another few steps, and he would be close enough to attempt a disarm.
“Theo,” he said, keeping his voice calm and even, hoping with everything in him that the ship would support him in this—but of course he would. The ship loved his trouble-prone captain. Her safety would be prime.
“Theo, back down the hall slowly, please. Go out through the hatch.”
Her head jerked in his direction.
“What?” she said sharply. “No.”
The bot moved, weapon swinging back toward her.
Jen Sin jumped.