Surebleak Port
Scout Headquarters
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
In point of fact, they were late. And not only late, but over a day late, which revealed them for the sad wastrels they were.
Happily, the deadlines involved were entirely between the two of them, dictated by nothing more than their mutual desire to achieve licenses and be free to fly once more. That they had put off the accomplishing of this desire for an entire day spoke entirely to the worth of she with whom they had tarried. Daav wondered if Kamele would be flattered to know that she rated higher than a pilot’s license with Aelliana.
“It might mean something to her now,” said his lifemate, having heard his thought. “And you, of course, would have left on the hour, having accomplished a mannerly and by-the-Code morning visit with an old friend, and proceeded with important business.”
“You know me too well,” he answered, and smiled when she laughed.
In the way of things, they were seeking another old friend—older even than the mother of Daav’s daughter, Theo, whose side they had just quit. He had been concerned, before the visit with Kamele, that she might find him too strange to her in his present state, or that she might slight Aelliana, whom she had never—overtly—met.
He ought to have known better—he who had been Kamele Waitley’s onagrata for more than twenty Standards. But, no, he had been a fool, and it had fallen to Kamele to demonstrate his error.
This other old friend…he had sought another path to their licenses, as had the delm. Aelliana had acknowledged that their arrival might surprise Clonak, and even dismay him, but that he was a practical man, who had long been a Scout, thereby having long ago achieved an easy way with regulations. He might possibly refuse to assist them, but he would be unlikely to report them as unnatural, which was their biggest fear, until their records had been firmly established.
Daav sighed as they gained the entrance of the so-called Surebleak Scout Headquarters. Despite his new, youthful appearance, he was feeling old and behind change. He remembered, for instance, a time when the Scouts—the Liaden Scouts—had been a single organization. There had been differences of opinion naturally, but not an outright break, as now. Liaden Scouts. Surebleak Scouts. And the Surebleak Scouts open, so they said, to training all who qualified.
There had been other changes, too, since he’d left Surebleak at the Delm’s Word, an old man, his lifemate a ghost tenanting what he must suppose to be the abundant empty parts of his brain. Not only had he returned as a young man, his lifemate walking at his side, but the port—Surebleak Port—had bestirred itself toward improvements.
Improvements meant construction, and construction meant detours; in the present case, an unanticipated and lengthy detour around construction of a recruitment center for the mercenaries, a temp agency, and a multiuse building, which had leapt into being between the old port and the civic mainstream.
The Surebleak Scouts were headquartered, for the moment, in a slightly renovated hangar in a part of the port that had long been abandoned for lack of need. The hangar was easily adaptable to Scout necessities, and by reason of its unfashionable location, they had their own yard and their own traffic manager. The slight distance from the heart of the port had likely been seen as a feature, Daav thought, but the emergence of the work zone had rendered the Scouts very nearly isolated.
Still, here they were, at last, through the doors and into the warmth. They paused for a moment just to appreciate that warmth, to put their hoods back, and pocket their gloves.
They approached the reception station, the Scout sitting there considering them with bright-eyed interest. It was the tradition that any Scout who was wounded or bored might sit reception. This one, with his bright, roving eye might have been of the latter class.
“Service, Pilots?” he asked.
“If you please,” Aelliana said, stepping forward. “We seek a meeting with Commander ter’Meulen, if he should have time for us.”
“ter’Meulen? I daresay you’ll find him in the cafeteria, drinking tea and reading a novel. He’ll want to hear names. I can make up a pair, if you’d like, but I think it might go less well than if you only gave me yours.”
“Daaneka tey’Doshi and Kor Vid yos’Phelium,” she answered serenely, those being the names they had chosen for themselves at the delm’s direction. They stood ready to produce a homeworld every bit as rooted in fantasy, should it be required, but the receptionist was satisfied with the names. He tapped a series of keys on his board, waking a soft buzzing. When it interrupted itself, he spoke with such high good humor that Daav was certain he had roused Clonak in the middle of his sleep shift.
“Master Clonak? Two young pilots here to see you, sir. One Daaneka tey’Doshi, and one Kor Vid yos’Phelium. Are you—Sir? Yes, sir: yos’Phelium. Indeed, sir: Kor Vid. The small meeting room? I will, yes. Is there—”
He frowned, for which Daav hardly blamed him, the snap as the connection was cut had seemed rather too loud to him from his position across the desk.
“Master ter’Meulen will see you in the High Commander’s own meeting room, Pilots. Have you been?”
The gleam in his eye betrayed him; clearly he wished to receive a negative, so he might try out some new riddle masquerading as directions.
“Never, I thank you,” Daav said severely, which ought to have brought the scamp to a lowering sense of his own worth. He was a hardened lad, however, and only grinned the merrier.
Aelliana turned slightly and, spotting a Scout with a tool belt ’round her waist, stepped forward.
“Your pardon, Scout. My partner and I are to meet Master ter’Meulen in the Commander’s small parlor, only we do not know the way. Could you advise us?”
The Scout paused and glanced over her shoulder to the reception desk, her gaze thoughtful. He on the desk did not, precisely, cringe, but it was clear he felt that a rebuke had been delivered.
The tool-belted Scout looked again to Aelliana.
“As it happens, the small parlor is on my way to debriefing. Please, Pilot, I would welcome your company—and your partner’s, too.”
* * *
The small parlor was locked when they arrived; Scout sig’Attaj was kind enough to unlock it for them and point out the teapot on the side table.
With that, she left them, and they stood at a loss for a moment, neither wanting tea, nor to sit down, and both brought sharply to mind of the difference between the best course and the only course.
The door snapped open and, yes, Daav thought, Clonak had been roused from his bed for this, damn the boy on the desk for a mischief-maker.
Besides the look of weary ire on his face, Clonak looked much the same as he had when Daav had last seen him, some months ago. They—
Clonak stopped between them and the closed door, hands on hips, looking from one face to the other, and back again.
His gaze finally settled on Aelliana.
“They didn’t get you quite right, Goddess.”
“No, he didn’t, Clonak, and you never saw anyone so apologetic. But you know, there was nothing to work with, after all these years, even had he been forewarned. He did the best he was able, working from what records were available and such material as he had put by. The gene map is a comedy, so I’m told—I can scarcely be counted Liaden at all. But, you know, I can’t be angry, when we imposed on him so dreadfully.”
Mouth tight, Clonak turned his attention to Daav. “You agreed to this.”
“In fact, I did not. I lay one breath from death at the time the decision was made. When I woke…I will tell you frankly, old friend, I had no heart to die again.”
“You woke. You were well, you were strong, you were young—and he had given you Aelliana Caylon back, or near enough. What was that worth, Daav?”
“Oh!” said Aelliana and moved one step closer to Clonak. Daav bit down hard on his impulse to grab her arm and pull her back. Clonak was his oldest friend. Clonak loved Aelliana. He would die rather than see her harmed. And yet…
“No further,” said his oldest friend coldly, and with that look in his eye.
Aelliana stopped and folded her hands before her.
“You might at least be interested in knowing that I am not a doll created for Daav’s amusement. In fact, it was the very circumstance of my being resident in Daav’s mind for so very many years after my murder that imposed the necessity of improvisation upon our benefactor. He had been prepared to generously give one of his own—blanks, as they are called—in order to preserve Daav’s life and his peace with Korval. Then, what should he discover but there were two requiring resurrection—and he did not stint us.”
She moved her shoulders.
“I can see that you are out of sorts, Clonak. We would have told the boy on the desk not to disturb your rest, had we known. But, indeed, you must think! We have been to the delm, and we have not only our lives, but a place in the clan. Would Korval accept monsters?”
“Korval is thin,” Clonak said, and Daav laughed.
“Not so thin as that.”
Clonak’s mouth twitched.
“Your point,” he conceded, and raised a hand to smooth his mustache. “You want licenses, I suppose.”
“We want testing,” Daav said, “and proper licenses.” He reached to his jacket and withdrew the packet that had been waiting for them on their wakening yesterday morning.
Clonak looked at it sourly. “Jeeves’s work?”
“Yes.”
“Put it away then; no question those papers will pass.”
Daav tucked the packet back into its pocket and waited while Clonak took consultation of the floor.
“I’ll put you both on sim,” he said at last. “We can do that now, if you have time.”
“We have time,” said Aelliana.
Clonak nodded. “Sim, then. While you work, I will take a look about. You’ll want Jump pilot tickets, at least. Master if we can manage it.”
“Korval,” Aelliana said, “insists that the tickets be accurate. If we test at third class, then that is how we will fly.”
Clonak nodded again.
“Understood, and the sim will help us determine if we are looking in that direction. If so, we can test you live right here. If it comes about that you will go for first class though—arrangements will need to be made.”
He sighed. “Come with me,” he said, and paused in his turn toward the door, head tipped.
“Daav?”
“Yes.”
“It pleases me, that you are not dead.”
“Thank you, Clonak.”
“Goddess?”
“Yes, Clonak.”
“You gave me quite a fright, you know.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I will try not to do so again.”