The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

Beka, as Warhammer settled onto the floor of the bay. “And you still haven’t told me how I’m going to pay you for it.”
    Her passenger began unbuckling his safety webbing. “Would you believe me, my lady, if I told you I was doing all this out of a sense of obligation to a member of your House?”
    “No,” she said flatly. “That stuff died out years ago.”
    She thought she heard him sigh. “So it did, Captain. So it did. Do you have the papers listing your hull number and engine numbers?”
    Beka undid her own restraining belts and stretched. “In my cabin,” she said. “I’ll bring them out.”
    “Right,” said her passenger. “Then you start shifting your cargo to Amsroto while I stamp the numbers on her. How soon must we lift out of here, to tow Amsroto to Artat on time?”
    She checked the cockpit chronometer and punched some figures into the navicomp. “We’ve got six hours forty-nine minutes thirty-five seconds Standard until the jump to hyperspace,” she said. “Make it six hours even to do the job.”
    “Let’s move, then.”
    By the time she’d fetched Warhamner ’s papers from the cabin locker and returned to the cockpit, she could see her passenger already waiting by the open entryway of Amsroto .
    “Works fast, doesn’t he?” she said aloud, and tucked the bundle of papers inside the quilted jacket she’d picked up to take the place of her still-sodden cloak.
    The sound of her footsteps on the ’Hammer ’s ramp echoed in the nearly empty bay, and her breath rose in a curl of mist. The Professor—if he was in fact the proprietor of this little hidey-hole—didn’t believe in wasting energy on extra heat.
    Out of long habit, she turned to her right at the foot of the ramp. “Let’s have a look at you,” she told the ship. Sensors and damage control comp caught a lot of things a pilot would miss, but … “computers go down, and numbers lie,” her father had said many times. “Always check for yourself.”
    In the course of her walk around Warhammer , she saw that the hidden bay held a surprising variety of different spaceships. A single-seat fighter, framework tilted at an angle suggesting that its last landing hadn’t been a gentle one, occupied deck space between a meteor-scarred cargo drone and a pleasure yacht decked out like a party cake in blue and silver trimming; and off in a corner beyond a dozen or so other antique craft, a battered-looking Magebuilt scoutship hunched on the deckplates of the bay like a scavenger bird on a rock.
    Beka stood very still for a moment, then nodded to herself, slowly, and continued her walk around the ‘Hammer.
    By the time she’d finished and walked over to Amsroto , the Professor was busy smoothing the serial numbers off one of the hull plates with a hydro-burnisher.
    “Have you got Warhammer ’s papers?” he asked, bending to drop the burnisher into an open tool kit.
    “Yes,” she said. She reached into the right-side pocket of her jacket for the miniature blaster that always lived there, and put the business end of the little weapon against the back of his neck.
    He froze. Then, with infinite caution, he lifted both hands and placed them flat against Amsroto’s hull.
    Beka started breathing again. “Now,” she said. “It’s time you told me what your name really is, and how you wound up with a Mageworld scoutcraft parked in your docking bay.”
    “Defiant?” asked her passenger, sounding imperturbable as ever. “I own her. As for names … names change, and the galaxy has forgotten mine. But I was Armsmaster to House Rosselin, when Entibor was still a living world.”
    “I’ll be damned,” said Beka. “Everybody thinks you’re dead.”
    “An excusable mistake,” said the Professor. “I … retired abruptly at the end of the war, and didn’t keep up my old acquaintances. My lady, can we abandon this rather awkward conversation for one a bit more civilized?”
    “I keep telling you, it’s ‘Captain,’”