Rules of Engagement Read online

Sewing by hand was much harder than it looked, though when she figured out that the tiny cup-shaped thing would fit over her finger and protect it from pricks of the long sharp thing that the thread fit through, she got along better. The fabric seemed to have a mind of its own; it shifted around as she tried to poke through it. But finally she had a long straight skirt attached to the bottom of her pullover, and skirts on the girls’ shirts. They hated them, and pulled them up around their waists to play . . . but that, it turned out, was something else forbidden to girls.

  “You were reared among heathen,” the man said. “We know that, and we make allowances for it. But you’re among decent folk now, and you must learn to act like decent folk. It is forbidden for any female to show herself off to men; these girl babies must be decently covered at all times.”

  Then why, Hazel wanted to scream, won’t you let us have underwear? Long pants? And how can you call a toddler playing on the floor a female showing herself off to men? She said nothing, but bobbed her head. She had to protect the littles, and she could do that only by being there-being able to sing them to sleep, to comfort them in a murmur that grew softer day by day.

  She had no idea how much time had passed when the daily visitor first took the boys out of the com­partment. By then, of course the raiders knew all the children’s names. At first, Paolo and Dris hung back . . . but the man simply gathered them up and carried them out. Hazel was terrified-what would they do to the boys? But in the time it took to feed the girls their lunch, the boys were back, grinning from ear to ear. Each held a new toy-Paolo had a toy space­ship, and Dris had a set of brightly colored beads.

  “We had fun,” Dris said. Hazel shushed him, but Paolo spoke up.

  “We can talk. They said so. Boys can talk all they want. It’s only girls have to be quiet.”

  Brandy scowled. “Gimme!”

  “No,” Paolo said. “This is mine. Girls can’t play with boys’ toys.” Brandy burst into tears.

  After that, day by day, the boys were weaned away from the girls. Daily visits outside the com­partment-they returned with glowing reports: they could run up and down the corridors; they could use the swings in the gym; they could use the computer in the schoolroom. The men fed them special foods, treats. The men were teaching them. The men read to them from books, new books, stories about animals and boys and exciting stuff. They were gone hours a day now, returning to the compartment only for baths and bed. Hazel was left with the girls, the two dolls, and the endless sewing.

  “You teach those girl babies to sew,” Hazel was told. “They’re old enough for that.”

  They didn’t want to learn, but that made no difference. Hazel realized that. But . . . no books at all? No vid, no computers, no chance to run and play? She didn’t ask. She didn’t dare. She didn’t even dare tell them stories, the stories they knew, because the compartment was rigged for scan. She had been warned to talk no more than necessary . . . telling them stories would, she knew without asking, be breaking the rules.

  The days dragged by. Stassi, though younger, was better with needle and thread than Brandy. Her stitches were ragged and uneven, but she could get them lined up into a sort of row. Brandy, more active by nature, fretted and fumed; her thread kept getting into knots. Hazel tried to find ways to let the child work off her wild energy, but in that small space, and hampered by a long skirt, the child was constantly being frustrated. She cried often, and had screaming tantrums at least once a day.

  Hazel would like to have had a screaming tan­trum of her own, and only the littles’ need for her kept her quiet.

  Chapter Seven

  Brun Meager exchanged the squad of Royal Security guards for ten of her father’s personal militia from Sirialis with consi­derable relief. She had known some of these people for years, and although she would rather have travelled alone, this was the next best situation. With them, she visited the Allsystems Leasing office and chose a roomy private yacht for the next stage of her journey. If she was not going to have Fleet’s respect anyway, there was no reason to ­endure discomfort. She chose the highest-priced food and entertainment package, and paid extra for an accelerated load-and-clearance that would get her on her way quickly. Allsystems checked her licenses, and those of the militia who would act as crew, and-in less than 24 hours-she had undocked and headed for her first destination. From now until the Opening Day of the hunt on Sirialis, she was free of schedules and demands, except those she chose for herself.

  Since it was handy-relatively-she decided to check out her holdings within the Boros Consortium. It was something her father would approve of, the kind of grownup, mature behavior he claimed she didn’t show often enough. And it was a long, long way from Castle Rock.

  She spent two days with the accountants at Podj, feeling virtuous and hard-working as she waded through stacks of numbers, and then decided to skip Corian-where there would be more news media, since it was a shipping hub-and go straight to Bezaire. She plotted the course, calculated the times . . . and scowled at the figures. If she went to Bezaire by any of the standard greenlined routes, she wouldn’t have time to visit Rotterdam before the start of the hunting season on Sirialis. But she was determined to visit Lady Cecelia and discuss with that other adventurous lady those things which she could not say to her parents. She could skip Bezaire-but she didn’t want to skip Bezaire.

  She looked at the navigation catalogs again. A caution route would save her five days, but that really wasn’t enough. Maybe the Boros pilots that ran the circuit all the time knew of a shortcut . . . she called up their time-on-route stats. Supposedly they all took greenlined routes . . . but the on-time figures were improbably high for the Corian-Bezaire leg of the journey. They had a shortcut; she was sure of it. Now who might be willing to let her in on the secret?

  For the rich and beautiful daughter of Lord Thornbuckle, a stockholder, the secret wasn’t that hard to find. A double-jump-point system where the two jump points had been stable for over fifty years. Fleet had warnings about systems harboring two jump points, but Fleet had warnings about every­thing. Brun grinned to herself as she plotted a jump direct from Podj to the first of the double jumps. A nice slow-vee insertion in such a small-mass vessel, and she would be safe as safe-and have plenty of time to visit Lady Cecelia.

  * * *

  Jester slid through the first jump point, and scan cleared. Brun checked the references, and grinned. The second jump point was right where it was supposed to be . . . an easy transit. She was tempted to make a flat run for it-nothing else should be insystem-but checked for beacons any­way.

  Four popped up on the screen. Four? She punched the readout, up came Elias Madero, which should have cleared the system three days before, and three ships with non-Familias registry.

  “Jump us out now!” Barrican said. Brun glanced at him; he was staring at the scan monitor.

  “They won’t notice us for another few minutes,” Brun said. “Whatever’s going on, we can find out and-”

  “We’re scan-delayed too,” he said. “They aren’t where you see them, whoever they are. And it’s trouble-”

  “I can see it’s trouble,” Brun said. “But if we’re going to get them help, we need to know what kind-who it is, what’s going on.”

  “It won’t help anyone if we’re blown away,” Calvaro said. He had come up behind her. “This thing can’t fight, and we don’t know what those are-they might outrun us.”

  “We’re little,” Brun said. “They’ll never even notice. Flea on the elephant.”

  “Milady-”

  That did it. Her father’s men, protecting her father’s daughter; they probably thought she would faint at the sight of blood. When would her father realize that she was grown, that she was capable . . .

  “We’re going to sneak in closer,” she said. “And look. Just look. Then we can jump out and tell Fleet what’s happened.”

  “That’s foolish, milady,” Calvaro said. “What if they-”

  “If they’re p
irates, they’ll think we’re too small to bother with.” She pushed back memories of that lecture on recent incursions from outlying powers. These were not the Benignity-she had seen Benign­ity ships on scan. Nor the Bloodhorde, which was all the way across Familias space and probably still licking its wounds after the Koskiusko mess. These were common criminals, and common criminals were after the big, easy profit . . . not chasing a small yacht with a few insignificant passengers.

  “If you would jump out now, we could be back in range of the Corian ansible in just a few hours-”

  “And have nothing much to say. No, we need to record some data, at least the beacon IDs of those other ships-” She grinned at them, and saw the grin have its usual effects. Her father’s employees had been putty in her hands since she had con­vinced the head cook to give her all the chocolate eclairs she could cram into her mouth. Nor had she been sick, which only proved that the stuffier grownups were entirely too cautious.

  Sneaking nearer with the insystem drive just nudging them along was dead easy. Brun napped briefly, slightly worried that one of them might figure out the lockout code she’d put on the nav computer so that they couldn’t go into jump while she was asleep. But they hadn’t. They’d tried-she could see that in their expressions, a mix of guilty and disgruntled-but she’d used a trick she’d learned at Copper Mountain and it held.

  Scan delay was down to one minute by then. One of the mystery ships was snugged up to the mer­chanter, and one was positioned a quarter second away. The third . . . her breath caught. The third had moved . . . on an intercept course.

  It couldn’t have seen Jester. The yacht was too small; they could have spotted the bobble near the jump point, but after that-after that she had laid in a straight course and they could have ­extrapolated.

  She should have jinked about. In the back of her mind, a nagging voice told her that she should have done what Barrican said, and jumped out right away. The pirates could not possibly have caught her then. Now-if they had military-grade scans-she flicked off the lockout. She could jump from here; there were no large masses to worry about. She had no idea where they might come out, jumping this far from the mapped points, but it had to be better.

  She set up the commands, and pushed the button. A red warning light came on, and a sac­charine voice from the console said “There are no mapped jump points within critical; jump insertion refused. There are no mapped jump points . . .”

  Brun felt the blood rush to her face as she slapped the jump master control the other way. A rented yacht, with standard nagivation software . . . she had not thought about that, about the failsafes it would have built in, which she would not have time to bypass. Of course Allsystems Leasing would protect their investment by limiting the mistakes lessees could make.

  She looked at the insystem drive controls. The yacht’s insystem drive, standard for this model, should be able to outrun anything but Fleet’s fastest-but only if she could redline it. She noticed that the control panel stopped well below what she knew was its redline acceleration. Still, it was all she had.

  “Milady-” Barrican said softly as she reached out.

  “Yes-”

  “They might not have seen us, even so. If you don’t do anything, they might miss us still.”

  “And if they don’t, we’re easy meat,” Brun said. “They’ve got the course; a preschooler could extra­polate our position.”

  “But if we seem to be unaware of them, they might still consider us unimportant. If you do anything, they’ll have to assume you have noticed trouble.”

  What she had noticed was how stupid she’d been. Someday you’ll get into something you can’t handle by being bright and pretty and lucky, Sam had told her. She’d assumed someday was a long way away, and here it was.

  “We have essentially no weapons,” she said softly, though there was no need for quietness. “So our only hope of escape is to get within effective radius of that jump point-unless they do ignore us, and somehow I don’t think they will.”

  On scan, the other ship’s projected course curved to parallel theirs. Another of the smaller ships now moved-and moved in the blink-stop way of a warship that could microjump within a system.

  “We can’t outrun that,” Brun said, under her breath. “Two of them . . .”

  “Just go along as if we had no scans out at all,” Barrican advised.

  It was good advice. She knew it was good advice. But doing nothing wore on her in a way that action never did. Second by second, Jester slid along much more slowly than it had to; second by second the unknown ships closed in. What kind of scan did they have? Koutsoudas had been able to detect activity aboard other ships-could these? Would they believe that a little ship on a simple slow course from jump point to jump point would notice nothing?

  Seconds became minutes, became an hour. She had shut down active scan long since; passive scan showed Elias Madero and the third unknown in the same relative location, with the other two flanking Jester. They were approaching the closest point to the merchanter on their projected course to the second jump point. If they got by, if they weren’t stopped, would that mean they were in the clear?

  There was no logical alternative. One could always choose certain death . . . but it was amazingly hard to do. So this was what Barin had faced . . . this was what the instructor had been talking about . . . Brun dragged her mind back to the present. The yacht had a self-destruct capability; she could blow it, and herself and her father’s loyal men. Or she could force the raiders to blow their way in, and not wear a pressure suit-that would do it. But . . . she made herself look at the faces of the men who surrounded her, who were about to die for her, or with her.

  “I was wrong,” she said. “No comfort now, but-you were right, and I was wrong. I should have jumped right back out.”

  “No matter, milady,” said Calvaro. “We’ll do what we can.”

  Which was nothing. They could die defending her . . . or be killed without fighting; she did not believe the raiders would spare them.

  “I think we should surrender,” she said. “Perhaps-”

  “Not an option, milady,” Calvaro said. “That’s not a choice you can make; we’re sworn to your father to protect you. Go to your cabin, milady.”

  She didn’t want to. She knew what was coming, and it was not death she feared, but having forced these men into a position where they had to die-would die-in a futile effort to protect her. I’m not worth it, she wanted to say . . . to admit . . . and she knew she must not say that. She must not take their honor from them. They thought her father was worth it, or-again Esmay’s words rang in her head-they thought they were worth it. She said their names, to each of them: Giles Barrican, Hubert Calvaro, Savoy Ardenil, Basil and Seren Verenci, Kaspar and Klara Pronoth, Pirs Slavus, Netenya Biagrin, Charan Devois. She could find no words for them beyond naming them, recognizing their lives. She gave them all she had, a last smile, then went meekly to her cabin as they wished. It wouldn’t work; she would die at the end, but . . . they would not have to see her dead or captive. They could die remembering that smile, for all the good it did . . . and she did not even know if they believed in an afterlife where such a memory might be comforting. She wrote their names, over and over, on many scraps of paper and tucked them in places she hoped the raiders would not find. They deserved more, but that was all she could do.

  When the cabin hatch gave at last, she faced the intruders with her personal weapons, and the first one to try the opening fell twitching. But the small sphere they tossed in burst in a spray of needles . . . and she felt the fine stinging all up her body. Her hand relaxed, her sidearm fell, she felt her knees sagging, and the deck came up to meet her.

  She woke with a feeling of choking, tried to cough loose the obstruction, and then realized it was a wad of cloth tied in her mouth. A gag, like something out of an ancient story. Ridiculous. She blinked, and glared up at the men standing over her. They were in p-suits, helmets dangling in back. Her body stil
l felt heavy and limp, but she could just move her legs when she tried. Then they spoke to each other in an accent so heavy that she could hardly understand it, and reached for her. She tried to struggle, but the drug made it impossible. They dragged her upright, then out through the twisted hatch into the main ­passage of the yacht . . . over the bodies of her guardsmen . . . through the tube they’d rigged between the yacht and their ship, whatever it was.

  They pushed her into a seat and strapped her in, then walked off. Brun wiggled as much as she could. Her arms, then her legs, began to itch, and then tingle. So . . . the drug was wearing off, but she didn’t see how she could get away. Yet. Your first duty is to stay alive.

  Several more men came through the tube . . . was that all? Or had some stayed aboard the yacht, and if so, why? She felt her ears throb as they shut the exterior lock, then the interior lock. They must have cast off the yacht . . . someone would find it. Some­day. If another Boros ship came this way, if another Boros ship even noticed a minor bit of space debris . . .

  The ship she was on shuddered uneasily-jump?-then steadied again. Three of the men were still back by the airlock. Now they went to work . . . Brun craned her head, trying to see. Her ears popped again. Something clanked; the ship made a noise like a tuning fork dragged on concrete, then stopped. The men moved on into the airlock, and-judging by the sounds-undogged the outer hatch. Colder air gushed in, chilling her ankles. She heard loud voices from the other-ship, it must be-and those men leaving.

  The ones who’d originally brought her aboard reappeared, now in some sort of tan uniform instead of p-suits, unstrapped her, and hauled her upright. If she could break loose, while they thought she was still weakened-but three more appeared at the airlock. Too many, her mind decided, even as her body tried to twist. Too much drug, she realized, as her muscles refused to give her the speed she was used to. Well, if she couldn’t fight, she could at least observe. Tan uniforms, snug-fitted shirts over slightly looser slacks, over boots. Brown leather boots, she noticed when she looked down. On the collar, insignia of a five-pointed star in a circle.