By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 Read online

  He laid a ten-credit chit on the counter top, next to the hatch in the armor-glass barrier. “What are the charges?”

  At least on Suivi Point nobody had to slip bribe money under the table—the “suggested gratuities” list was posted in the first-level lobby. The clerk pulled the ten-chit through the barrier without blinking, and punched up another screen on the desk comp.

  Her eyes widened. “Picked up on—my goodness, it’s a murder complaint, ten-year-old warrant.”

  Ten years. Jessan did some quick arithmetic in his head. The captain’s first port call after leaving Galcen—the one where she almost didn’t make it back to the ship … someday I’ll have to ask her what she really did.

  He remembered something else she’d told him about that first visit to Suivi. “Is there anybody else named in the original complaint?”

  “An off-worlder named LeSoit,” the clerk said. “Listed as a crew member on the Sidh, no home of record given.”

  “Is he in custody as well?”

  “He wasn’t on the invoice when we got her,” the clerk said. “You’ll have to take it up with Contract Security.”

  Jessan laid another couple of ten-chits on the counter. “Thanks anyway. Do you have a date-of-release or a price-to-match on Captain Rosselin-Metadi? I have the authority to release funds if necessary.”

  “Sorry, this contract is coded Non-Negotiable.”

  Jessan raised an eyebrow. “For a simple murder complaint? On Suivi Point?”

  “Yes … well. The contractor has filed new charges since turning over the subject.”

  Jessan laid down several more credit chits, and watched them slide across the counter. “May I ask for an enumeration?”

  “Sure.” The clerk punched up another screen on the desk comp. “Let’s see … ‘endangering the defense of Suivi Point, trafficking with the Mageworlds, and impersonating a planetary ruler’ … plus assorted minor charges for concealed weapons, resisting arrest, and indecent exposure.”

  “Indecent exposure?” Jessan shook his head. “I’ll never understand some people.” He put another ten-chit on the counter. “I need to speak with Captain Rosselin-Metadi before I leave.”

  “Sorry,” the clerk said. “The subject’s being held incommunicado right now, with a transfer scheduled to max-pri.”

  “Isn’t that a bit extreme, even for the new charges?”

  The clerk shrugged. “It’s not my fault that the Mageworlds situation has everybody nervous. The max-pri, though … that’s customary whenever a contractor asks the committee for a summary termination order.”

  “I see,” Jessan said. He took out the last of his credit chits and slid it under the barrier. “And who is the contractor that wants a summary termination on Beka Rosselin-Metadi?”

  “A corporation called Tri-Worlds Holding,” the clerk said. “From Pleyver.”

  “Ah,” said Jessan. “I see.”

  Brigadier General Perrin Ochemet—Space Force Planetary Infantry, formerly commander of Prime Base on Galcen—lay awake in his darkened cell. He wasn’t certain how long he had been a prisoner of the Mageworlders; food and water came to the cell at regular intervals, and enough dim light to eat and drink by, but he had no idea how many meals a day his captors thought fit to give him.

  They weren’t starving him; the meals were adequate though not lavish. He had been questioned, of course—it would have surprised him not to be—but the interrogation had been cursory enough to be insulting, as if the CO of Prime Base had nothing of importance to tell them. The one question in which they displayed genuine interest was the one for which he didn’t have an answer:

  “Where is General Metadi?”

  He hadn’t even bothered lying. “I don’t know.”

  They hadn’t believed him at first—had asked him the same questions several times over, with varying degrees of emphasis. In the end they’d brought in one of their Mages, a masked figure in a black cloak who’d listened to him saying “I don’t know” yet another time.

  The Mage had done nothing except look at Ochemet from behind the black plastic mask. Then he—or she; Ochemet couldn’t tell which—had said something in the Mageworlds tongue, and the questioners had left him alone ever since.

  Now, however, the faint noise of his cell door sliding open told Ochemet that his period of grace had ended. I should have known they wouldn’t forget about me for very long. He closed his eyes and prepared himself for renewed questioning.

  “Get up and come with me.”

  The voice didn’t belong to any of the Mageworlders. The tone was all wrong—low—pitched and urgent, almost ragged, and without a victor’s self-assurance. The accent was wrong, too. Ochemet opened his eyes again.

  The greyish illumination that accompanied his meals had returned to the cell. In the dim light, Ochemet saw a shadowy figure standing next to his bunk, and recognized the face above the ragged clothing.

  “Master Ransome!”

  “I’m flattered that you remember me,” said the Adept. “But time is short. We must be going.”

  Ochemet sat up and swung his feet down onto the floor of the cell. He looked closer, and saw that the Guild Master’s wrists were torn, the dark blood running down freely across the palms of Ransome’s hands.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “Not badly. Follow me.”

  Ochemet stood. “I hope you’ve got a good idea this time. The last time I followed you someplace, I ended up in here.”

  “What needs to happen, happens,” said Ransome.

  Out in the narrow corridor, they turned to the right; always before, when being led away for a questioning session, Ochemet had gone to the left, and this new route was strange to him. In silence, he and Ransome threaded their way through a maze of low, narrow passages, heading from the core of the ship toward its outer skin, where the lifeboat pods waited in bay after bay.

  There, beside one of the open pods, Ransome halted. “This one will do.”

  Ochemet shook his head. “They’ll shoot us out of the sky.”

  “And take a chance on killing one of their own people by mistake? No—watch.”

  Ransome lifted away an access plate in the bulkhead, revealing a series of switches marked in yellow script. He pulled sharply on one of them; it came out of the socket and dangled at the end of a bundle of colored wires, so that the bare terminals on the reverse were plainly visible. Moving with a deftness that surprised Ochemet—Adepts weren’t supposed to know about tricks like that—Ransome laid the edge of the access plate across two of the terminals.

  All up and down the corridor Ochemet heard a series of snaps and whooshes as vacuum-tight doors slid shut. The deckplates under his feet vibrated with the serial percussion of explosive bolts pushing lifeboats away from the ship. He felt Ransome’s hand pressing against his shoulder blades.

  “Inside!”

  He half-stepped, half-tumbled into the pod with Ransome close on his heels as the door snapped closed. There was the sharp crack of the ejection bolts, thunderous in the enclosed space, and the pod tumbled free. Ochemet lurched sideways, grunting as one of the zero-g handholds slammed into his rib cage, and stumbled into one of the padded seats.

  Automatically, he groped for safety webbing—found it—and worked to fasten it around him while his mind tried to make sense of everything that had happened. In the seat beside him, Master Ransome looked tired but satisfied.

  Ochemet drew a deep breath. “It looks like we’ve escaped,” he said. “Now tell me something—what’s going to keep the Mageworlders from catching us all over again?”

  “The Mageworlders have other problems at the moment,” Ransome said. “They’ve already begun moving their main fleet out of Galcen orbit.”

  “If you say so. But there isn’t anything wrong with their shipboard holding cells, I know that much. So how did you manage to get loose?”

  There was a pause. “It is a cardinal mistake,” said the Adept finally, “to confuse the name of a thing
with its essence, and another mistake to think that the power lies in the name.”

  “I suppose you’re going to explain that?”

  “It’s simple enough,” Ransome said. “The Magelords created chains and manacles to hold the Master of the Guild, but in their fear of him they forgot about Errec Ransome.”

  Ochemet stared at him. “But you are the Master of the Guild!”

  Ransome smiled. Ochemet found the expression disquieting on the Guild Master’s bruised and bloodstained face.

  “So the Magelords thought,” said the Adept. “And it will prove their downfall in the end.”

  In Veratina’s Combat Information Center, nobody said anything, or moved. The sensor tech’s aim was unwavering, and Colonel DeMayt’s body lay across the console as a testimony to her resolve. She was still holding Faramon at blaster-point when the doors at both ends of CIC blew inward and troopers in armored p-suits swarmed through, energy lances at the ready.

  One of the troopers relieved the sensor tech with the blaster, keeping Faramon pinned in the command chair, while the others took over the watch stations in CIC without resistance. The officer in charge, a young man with infantry captain’s pips on his collar, wore an armored suit like the rest of his troopers. Somewhere along the way to Veratina’s CIC he’d abandoned the bulky helmet and the gloves. Now he paced back and forth, frowning slightly, as reports came in over the intraship comm system: “Engineering secured.” “Comms secured.” “Weapons stations secured.”

  Eventually a sergeant appeared in one of the broken doors and saluted. “All secure, sir.”

  The infantry captain’s frown eased slightly. “Very well. You may stand easy on station. Signal to Selsyn: All secure. Tyche sends.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  There was silence for a moment, while Tyche continued to pace the area. Then one of the PI troopers called out, “Selsyn rogers for signal.”

  “Pass to Selsyn, ready to receive visitor.”

  More time passed—enough time for a shuttle to cross between the two ships—while Faramon sat in his command chair and felt the cold sweat trickling down his back. Then General Metadi himself strode into CIC, flanked by a pair of troopers with energy lances at the ready and followed by a flag aide with a miniature blaster in one hand and a loop of gold braid on her shoulder.

  The General didn’t bother looking at Faramon. “Captain Tyche,” he said. “Report.”

  The infantry officer saluted. “Sir. RSF Veratina is in Republic control, mutineers captured. Five casualties among our troops. Still working to determine how many the mutineers lost. Sorting out who actually mutinied and who just got press-ganged into going along with them is going to take even longer.”

  “Very well. Have you located the commanding officer of this vessel?”

  “Yes, sir.” Tyche gestured toward the command seat, and for the first time Metadi looked in that direction.

  “Captain Faramon,” the General said. “You were on Galcen for Staff School, what, three years ago?”

  Faramon managed to nod.

  Metadi glanced around the Combat Information Center—looking for something, it seemed to Faramon. Then the General’s gaze lit on the body of Colonel DeMayt, still sprawled across the hi-comms console. Metadi went over to the corpse and pulled the insignia from DeMayt’s uniform collar.

  He turned back to the infantry officer. “Captain Tyche, front and center.”’

  The officer stepped forward. “Sir.”

  The General took a step forward in his turn, reached out with his free hand, and removed the captain’s pips from Tyche’s collar. Then he pinned the colonel’s insignia in their place.

  “Captain Tyche,” he said, “I’m promoting you to the rank of Colonel, Space Force Planetary Infantry, effective immediately.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the infantry officer. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, Colonel,” Metadi told him. “I’m convening a special court-martial. And you, I’m afraid, are the only officer available who is either equal or superior in rank to Captain Faramon. You are, therefore, the entire board. And the charge is mutiny.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tyche said. He turned and looked at Faramon for a moment, while Faramon tried not to flinch from the infantry officer’s regard. Finally General Metadi spoke again.

  “Colonel Tyche, what is your verdict?”

  “Guilty,” said Tyche at once.

  “Very well, Colonel. I accept your verdict.”

  The General turned again to Faramon. The entire proceeding had taken, Faramon realized with a shiver, somewhat less than a full minute.

  “Captain Faramon,” Metadi said, “you have been found guilty of mutiny, for which the penalty is death or such other sentence as a court-martial may direct. Sentencing is delayed upon the pleasure of the court. In the meantime, Captain—I have a few questions for you.”

  Grand Admiral sus-Airaalin threw the manacles down onto the bunk. The cuffs were stained red-brown with drying blood, but they were unbroken, and the chain was fixed to the wall of the detention cell.

  “He’s done it, Mael.”

  “I fear so, my lord.”

  “Continue searching.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Mid-Commander Taleion hesitated for a moment before continuing. “It would appear, my lord, that Master Ransome departed the Sword with the jettisoned lifepods.”

  sus-Airaalin had been frowning at the empty restraints; now he lifted his head and regarded Taleion somberly. “You think that, do you?”

  “Ransome’s mind is too well guarded for us to touch it directly,” Taleion said, “but the Circle has been able to tap into the scene that General Ochemet sees. He is, in fact, inside one of our lifepods, and Master Ransome is with him.”

  “Continue searching the ship anyway,” sus-Airaalin said. “If we lose them, the Resurgency will have us flayed alive—and with good reason. Errec Ransome is dangerous.”

  “Perhaps we should have killed him in the first place.”

  The Grand Admiral shook his head. “No, Mael. Ransome is too strong, too focused—kill somebody like that without breaking him first, and he’ll barely notice that he’s dead.”

  Taleion paled slightly. “Ekkannikh,” he said, using the old backcountry term for an unpropitiated ghost.

  “Just so,” said sus-Airaalin. “And not the sort that you can buy off with a bit of wine at Year’s End, either.” He frowned again at the manacles. “These restraints should have held the Guild Master, no matter how great his will to escape might have been. They were Circle-forged for that purpose, and more than one life was spent to strengthen them.”

  “Then how—?”

  sus-Airaalin’s mouth twisted. “We’ve been caught in the web of our own cleverness, Mael. It was the Master of the Adepts’ Guild we feared, the Breaker of Circles who was our scourge and our constant enemy; and we made these chains to his measure. If our prisoner was able to break free of them, it can mean only one thing: Errec Ransome is no longer the Master of the Guild—and the vows and obligations that bound him, bind him no longer.”

  V. SUIVI POINT: MAIN DETENTION GYFFER: PORT OF TELABRYK

  THE SHORT-TERM holding cells in Suivi Point Main Detention were made out of cheap plast-block and painted an unlovely beige. Beka had seen them before, when Claw Hard’s chief engineer had gotten himself contracted-in for drunk and disorderly, and she’d been the one who brought down the money to buy him out. Her own brush with what passed for law on Suivi Point had come much earlier, and hadn’t gotten that far.

  She’d anticipated staying in the holding area indefinitely, stretched out yawning on the cell bunk and reading the graffiti scratched into the walls—an extensive and informative collection of obscenities in various languages. Instead, she hadn’t been in short-term holding for fifteen Standard minutes before another deputation of armed ConSecs showed up to escort her down several levels to an area she had never seen.

  The new cell block had a force field over a cip
her lock on a blastproof door. Inside, everything was dull black metal, under a pitiless unshaded light from recessed panels protected by armor-glass. Under the measured impact of her escort’s booted feet, the metal floor plates gave back only the dead, anechoic notes of ultra-heavy soundproofing.

  She didn’t need to ask where she was now; Main Detention’s max-pri cell block had been legendary all over the space lanes back when she was a green kid fresh out of a Galcenian finishing school. The narrow corridor was lined with solid metal doors; the ConSecs opened the third one they came to, and pushed her through it. The door slid shut behind her with the solid noise of panels meeting in a blastproof seal.

  Beka stood for a moment in the center of the tiny room—no bigger than one of the holding cells up above, and furnished with the same bare essentials—before falling onto the thin mattress in the metal bunk and preparing again to wait until somebody showed up to talk.

  Somebody would, eventually. Main Detention charged by the hour, and top security was expensive; if she was in here on a max-pri contract, she had to be worth a lot of money to one of ConSec’s richer clients. Worth it alive, not dead; murder was cheap on Suivi Point.

  A longer time went by than she’d expected—several days, counting by the regular arrival of bland but nourishing meals on flimsy trays. She didn’t see anyone, and began to fear that her isolation was the point all by itself.

  What the hell is going on out there? she wondered, and was hard put to keep from pacing back and forth in frustration. But a max-pri cell would have both visual and audio pickups, and she was damned if she’d give the ConSecs a free show. Why do they need me out of sight if they don’t need me dead?

  I hope Ignac’ got the signal. The last thing I need is for Main Detention to seize the ’Hammer for payment of cell fees.

  She sat up, hugging her knees to keep from breaking into frantic, random motion. And Nyls. I really, really hope he isn’t in the next cell over, waiting for that damned family of his to come up with a matching sum.