Brian Daley - Jinx on a Terran Inheritance

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

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JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

Brian Daley

I think this one's for the house-apes: Eileen, Kevin, Danny and Mike, and Erin and

Nicholas

CHAPTER 1—PARDON US

"Hold it!" Alacrity yelled, grabbing for the controls. "That's her!" He yanked the corridor tram out of

autoguide and changed course so fast that Hobart Floyt had to clutch frantically to keep their scant

luggage from flying down the corridor. The tram came to an abrupt stop behind a huge pilaster—the

stronghold Frostpile was built on the grand scale in every way—nearly throwing them both off.

The robes they'd worn to the funeral of Cazpahr Weir, and in which they'd nearly been killed an hour

earlier, hung limply, bedraggled and ridiculous. Floyt bruised his hip against his Inheritor's belt, a

waistband of heavy reddish alloy plaques.

"Who'd you see?" Floyt demanded in a whisper. "What's going on? We should've demanded that

Governor Redlock give us back our guns, that's what!" Until a few weeks earlier, Floyt, native of

preterist, isolationist Terra, had refused to so much as touch a firearm. But then again, he'd been through

a lot recently. "Hey, watch where you're stepping," he added as Alacrity clambered over him.

Alacrity winced at the pain from the rib he'd cracked that morning in an airbike crash. He peered

cautiously around the pilaster, motioning Floyt to silence. Alacrity's big, oblique eyes, their great irises a

radiant yellow streaked with red and black, were wider than ever.

His baggy robe had slid back off his shoulders, revealing a mane of slate-gray hair, shot through with

strands of silver, growing in a sharp V down the muscular channel of his back. He was a lean 197

centimeters tall.

Floyt left the tram, padding up behind in soft tabi. More than twenty centimeters shorter than Alacrity,

he had close-trimmed brown hair and a beard going to gray. Recent events had left him less stocky than

formerly. "Who is it? Did you see Heart?"

"Heart? Why would I be hiding from Heart? I'm in love with her! No, I thought I saw Sintilla."

Floyt snorted exasperatedly. "Sintilla went to one of the lesser wakes before Weir's last rites, remember?

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

She'll be gone for hours. Now, stop being such a worrywart and let's—"

"A what? Wari-what?" Alacrity babbled.

"Hah? Not wari, 'wari-wart!' I mean, wari-what! Goddammit, worrywart, wart! Floyt gibbered.

"Keep it down, Ho! That's all we need, for Tilla to spot us now! Or d'you want her tagging along all the

way to Blackguard?"

Floyt drew a slow breath between clenched teeth. A patient and reasonable man, he was near his limits.

He eased around the pilaster just below his friend, whispering, "Even if it is her, she won't be looking for

us yet. And by the time she finds out that we've—"

He straightened up suddenly and shouldered past the rangy Alacrity. "That woman's a food technician!

Couldn't you tell from the Suit of Lights, or whatever that outfit's called? She's twice Sintilla's size,

besides! Now, will you come on, before the Blue Pearl leaves without us?"

"Looked like her at first; same hair. Listen, Ho, we can't be too careful. We've got enough trouble as it

is."

"No argument there," Floyt conceded. Their Earthservice behavioral conditioning was eating at them—

they had to take this mysterious bequest from Weir, a starship called the Astraea Imprimatur, back for

the enrichment of the Earthservice Resources Bureau.

That meant going to a planet called Blackguard—about which they knew slightly more than nothing—to

claim her. Provided they could get out of Frostpile alive.

"Trouble?" said a voice behind them.

The two leapt up into the air, colliding with each other, Alacrity clawing for a sidearm he was not

carrying. Dincrist, Heart's father, stood watching them.

He'd already changed from funeral robes to the heavily decorated uniform of a commercial starship

captain. He didn't seem to be armed. But if looks really could kill … Alacrity thought.

"You have all the trouble you can handle, and far, far more." Dincrist was the picture of a patrician-

sportsman, even taller than Alacrity and very fit, white-haired and deeply tanned.

Alacrity, at twenty-two a working spacer—a breakabout—for many years, held himself ready. He and

Dincrist had already mixed it up twice, more or less to a draw, but Dincrist hadn't been through any

airbike disasters or murder attempts yet that day, and was in excellent condition.

Still, Alacrity bristled. "What, you again? Shouldn't you be off flogging a real breakabout someplace?"

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

Dincrist flushed slightly. The head of a powerful shipping and shipbuilding empire, he'd had only a

minimum of actual experience in starship service—had only the technical right to be wearing his

magnificent uniform.

"I heard about Endwraithe's trying to kill you," he said, tight-lipped. "I'm very glad that he failed; I mean

to see to you myself, Fitzhugh."

"See how good the guy is at that kind of talk, Ho?" Alacrity said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Very effective facial expressions, too," Floyt replied lightly. Inside, though, he was fighting dread and

despair. Dincrist was a man to be feared.

"I've no time to waste on nitwits." Dincrist took a half step toward them, and Alacrity braced for a

dustup.

Instead, Heart's father pointed a finger at them and proclaimed, "Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt, I,

Captain Soft-coygne Dincrist, declare myself to be your sworn enemy and you both to be mine. By the

Bans and the Pandect, by word and by deed, I swear to harm and to hinder you, to break and to kill you.

I call down upon you misfortune, reversal, calamity, and affliction."

The rolling cadence of the avowal was so hypnotic, Dincrist's tone so orotund, it took them a moment to

realize that he'd finished.

"Oh, oh yeah?" Alacrity parried weakly. "Well, don't count on it."

"Right!" Floyt jumped in, surprisingly ferocious. "If you give us any trouble, we'll spin your head

around like a weathervane!"

Alacrity took heart. "That's right; we'll stomp you flatter than a month-old road-kill!"

"Kill you faster than anything in the pharmacy!"

"Polish our shoes on your balls!"

Their uncouth counterspell took Dincrist by surprise. Too furious to retaliate in kind, he turned and

strode away quickly. They called parting incantations after him.

"Dog your dong in a hatch!"

"Do the Dance of Death on your face!" Alacrity lowered his voice. "Did you hear that, Ho? He, he

jinxed us!"

"The way things have been going, how will we know if it takes?"

"We'd better get moving."

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

They reboarded the tram and resumed the trip to the tower roof. From there, Governor Redlock's opulent

shuttle, the Blue Pearl, was to depart. The governor had a lot of things on his mind, including the death

of his father-in-law, First Councillor Inst, who'd attacked Alacrity and Floyt during the airbike race, and

the discovery that his wife, Queen Dorraine, wasn't quite who he'd always thought she was.

The two companions-in-adversity doubted Redlock's willingness to delay lift-off just for them, so they

put on all speed.

Then, too, there was Sintilla, the lively, determined little free-lance journalist who'd become something

of an ally to them at Frostpile—in part for her own gain. They'd discovered, only minutes earlier, that

she planned to write a series of lurid and completely fictionalized adventure books about them.

Anonymity and a certain freedom of movement were just about the only things they had going for them,

but Sintilla meant to bandy their names around in purple-prose penny dreadfuls with the most

sensationally absurd titles Floyt had ever heard.

"Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh Challenge the Amazon Slave Women of the Supernova." Floyt

groaned to himself.

Alacrity shook his head dejectedly. "I know, I know. But don't let yourself think about that now, Ho.

Just stay alert. Endwraithe might've had some backup. Or Dincrist could try something, High Truce or

not. Scheisse, I wish Redlock had given us back our persuaders."

They cruised past security checkpoints manned by Invincibles, elite troops of the Weir forces in dress

uniforms of crimson and gold. The Invincibles had been ordered to insure that no weapons were

smuggled into Frostpile during the High Truce. Their searches were quite thorough. Yet they'd somehow

missed Endwraithe's. Why a top officer of the powerful Bank of Spica should want to quiz Floyt about

his inheritance, then try to shoot him and Alacrity, was still a puzzle.

Floyt delicately felt at his nose, broken—in the same crash that had cracked Alacrity's rib—and still

smarting despite medical treatment. His tongue probed at the gap where Alacrity had knocked out two of

his teeth.

"What's the point of watching out for assassins?" Floyt grouched. "The underhanded bastards are always

sneaking up on us anyhow."

With the Willreading and other ceremonies over and the High Truce near its end, a good deal of traffic,

mostly departing guests, was traveling the cyclopean corridors of Frostpile. Floyt, who'd only met a

small fraction of them, stared at the dignitaries who'd converged on Epiphany, Weir's seat of power,

from dozens of worlds. Weir had been a major power in that region of space; reapportionment of his

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

domain was an important event. He doubted that his family and friends back on Earth would be able to

believe him when—if—he got back to describe the hodgepodge of racial subtypes, costumes and finery,

and babel of tongues.

Alacrity raised his arm to see how much time remained before the Pearl was due to lift and realized that

his wrist was bare.

"Damn! Ho, our proteuses! We left them with Tilla!" Alacrity was racked by indecision but leaning

toward writing off the proteuses. The two had little money, and Blue Pearl was their only ticket

offplanet.

With a magician's flourish, Floyt drew the two instruments from the pocket of his robe. "I spotted them

while we were, um, visiting Tilla's rooms."

"Searching" was more the word. But Alacrity took his proteus gratefully; he had very few possessions,

but it was just about his most treasured, a commo device, databank, systems accessor and more, in a

wrist torc of overlapping, chitinous black metal plates tinged with verdigris. He ran a quick check. "It's

okay; she didn't tap into the protected stuff. I guess Tilla didn't mess with it."

"Same here." Floyt's was a very cheap, simple model provided for his off world mission by the

Earthservice. Alacrity hid a grin. There was little enough anyone could learn from Floyt's proteus, but

some of the secrets stashed in Alacrity's could command serious amounts of money and bring down

upon him enemies prepared to do a lot more than jinx him.

Just then the tram floated out onto the tower roof under the night sky of Epiphany. Frostpile lit the sky, a

shining faerie city. It was too bright to see many stars, but Epiphany's two moons, Guileless Giles and

the Thieving Magpie, were visible.

They were on the same roof where they'd disembarked from the Blue Pearl only four and one half days

before. The acreage of formal carpet was still in place, lustrous black, worked in thread-of-gold with

Weir insignia and symbols, the broken slave collar most prominent among them. The Pearl was

nowhere to be seen.

"Do you think they left without us, Alacrity? Redlock and Dorraine invited us along, after all. I mean,

even if Inst did get killed when we crashed the airbike, I thought—"

"They're still here, Ho." Alacrity pointed to where the shuttle was poised on the tip of a spiral

resembling a unicorn's hom, at the far side of Frostpile. It might have been the tower where Endwraithe

had cornered them before Alacrity shot the banker with one of Floyt's teeth.

Redlock's shuttle deserved her name. She was a glassy-blue sphere with a nacreous sheen, forty meters

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[Fitzhugh2]-JINXONATERRANINHERITANCEeVersion1.1-clickforscannotesJINXONATERRANINHERITANCEBrianDaleyIthinkthisone'sforthehouse-apes:Eileen,Kevin,DannyandMike,an\dErinandNicholasCHAPTER1—PARDONUS"Holdit!"Alacrityyelled,grabbingforthecontrols."That'sher!"He\yankedthecorridortramoutofautoguideandchanged...

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