Quiet Knives by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Read Free Book Online

gone, scattered, along with all
the rest of the Judges and staff who had managed to go missing
before Grom Trogar thought to look for them. It was unlikely that
they knew everything--and they'd figure that, too. Which meant he
had a bad time ahead of him.
    Nothing to help it now--if he ran anywhere
on Shaltren, they'd catch him, and the inconvenience would only
make his examination worse. If he waited for them, and went
peaceably--it was going to be bad. Chairman Trogar would see to
that.
    If they'd been at the ship,
they'd be here soon, if they weren't already.
    The door to the house slid open.
    He stepped inside, playing the part of a man
with nothing to fear. His persona had long been established--a bit
stolid, a bit slow, a steady pilot, been with the Judge since his
itinerant days.
    He flicked on the lights--public room empty.
So far, so good. They'd take their time coming in--Judges and their
crews, after all, had a reputation for being a bit chancy to mess
with.
    There was some urgency on him, now. He'd
planned for back-up; it was second nature anymore to plan for
back-up. At the time it had seemed prudent and, anyway, he'd meant
to be gone before it came to that.
    Meant
to , he thought now, walking quick through
the darkened rooms, heading for the comm room and the
pinbeam. Meant to isn't
'will. '
    He'd put a life in danger. Might have put a
life in danger. If the first message had gotten through. If she
hadn't just read it and laughed.
    I'll come for
you , she whispered from memory, the tears
running her face and her eyes steady on his. He moved faster now,
surefooted in the dark. She'd come. She'd promised. Unless
something radical had happened in her life, altering her entirely
from the woman he had known--Midj Rolanni kept her
promises.
    He'd had no right to pull
her in on this. Especially this. Even as a contingency back-up that was never
going to be called into play. No right at all.
    He slapped the wall as he strode into the
comm center. The lights came up, showing the room empty--but he was
hearing things now. Noises on his back path. The sound, maybe, of a
door being forced.
    Fingers quick and steady, he called up the
'beam, fed in the ID of the receiver. The noises were closer
now--heavy feet, somebody swearing. Somewhere in one of the outer
rooms, glass shattered shrilly.
    He typed, heard feet in the
room beyond, hit send , cleared the log, and spun, hands up and palms showing
empty.
    "If you're looking for the High Judge," he
said to man holding the gun in the doorway. "He's not home."
    * * *
    VASHON NOT FINDING anything
about to blow down in Skeedaddle's innards, and the vent upgrade going more smoothly
than the man himself had expected, Midj was back on-board in good
order inside of eight local days.
    She stowed her kit and initiated a systems
check, easing into the pilot's chair with a sigh of relief. The
ship was quiet, the only noises those she knew so well that they
didn't register with her anymore, except as a general sense of
everything operating as it should. Of all being right in her world,
enclosed and constrained as it was.
    When she ran with a 'hand--never with a
partner, not after Kore--the noises necessarily generated by
another person sharing the space would distract and disorient her
at first, but pretty soon became just another voice in the overall
song of the ship.
    And whenever circumstances had her on-port
for any length of time, she came back to the ship with relief her
overriding emotion, only too eager to lower the hatch and shut out
the din of voices, machinery and weather.
    Hers. Safe. Comfortable.
Familiar. Down to the ancient Vacation on
Incomparable Panore holocard Kore'd given
her as a promise after one particularly hard trade run.
    She'd thought before now that maybe it was
time to start charting the course of her retirement. Not that she
was old, though some days she felt every Standard she'd lived had
been two. But she did have a certain responsibility to her ship,
which