Tara K. Harper - Lightwing

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LIGHTWING

Tara K. Harper

A Del Rey Book

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this

book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as

“unsold or destroyed'' and neither the author nor the publisher may

have received payment for it.

A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

right Conventions. Published in the United States of America by

Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Lim-

ited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-92392

ISBN 0-345-37161-5 Printed in Canada First Edition:

July 1992 Cover Art by Edwin Herder

To Dr. Ernest V. Curto,

who spoke in his rich brown-toned voice

to the stars in my eyes.

It is like the pillowfight

when he walked me home

the first time.

CHAPTER 1

She was late. Her shift had ended half an hour earlier, but

Kiondili was just now getting rid of the last bit of interference

in the ship's primary drive field. By now her class at the insti-

tute would have started, but until this field was finished, she

did not dare leave. The care she took in tuning the drives might

make the difference between being called back to work to-

morrow and being turned away with a shrug. There were

hundreds of people vying for every opening on the space-

docks. Kiondili Wae could not afford to jeopardize her po-

sition, no matter how temporary it was. For the privilege of

paying her rent, she could live with being late to her morning

class. If she was lucky, she would not even lose her turn in

the lab.

Tuning out the last field interference, she checked her re-

sults against the model in the holotank. They were good. Now

she could hurry. She hauled herself up from the floor, stag-

gering as her cramped legs refused to hold her weight, then

shut the system down quickly. She turned the holotank off.

Then she tore the temple jacks from her head, stuffing

them in one of her pockets. She was at least ten minutes late.

Two more minutes to check out with the ship's controller,

one minute to the nearest free-boost chute, two minutes to

the lab—she might just make it before the professor took her

name off the access list and let someone else into the lab.

She barely waited for the controller to hand her credit chit

back before jumping off the ramps and sprinting to a boost

chute. Level-three pay . . . For a nonguild sensor, this kind

of credit opportunity came along only once a year, and with

her credit chit as thin as her regulation jumper, Kiondili had

not hesitated to work a double night shift. Her scholarship

had barely paid her tuition to the end of the year. Without

the few jobs she had found this year, she would not have

been able to afford even her meager rent. The first two days

on this job had paid the rent for the last month, including the

late fine, and the last two days would pay it up for the next

six weeks. And she was still set for meals—the ten credits

she had earned in the spring for robo servicing had bought

enough high-pro C rations to last eight months. The thought

of the tasteless wafers brought a humorless smile to her face.

They were nourishing, but they left an emptiness in her gut

that would not be satisfied with anything less than a real meal

from a fully programmed dispenser. Not only had this job

paid her rent, but as of this morning it would allow her to

buy the first real meal she had had in more than five months.

She dodged a group of humans and human-mutants—or

H'Mu, as the Federation classed them—and triggered the

proximity light on the boost chute before she arrived. Being

a sensor with esper skills had its advantages. Where other

sensors had to manipulate fields by using their temple jacks,

Kiondili could mentally focus her biofields to activate a small

particle field. She could even control the strength of such a

field—as long as it was a local adjustment. Now, as she dove

toward the edge-lit hole in one of the dock's transport cy-

linders, she flexed the chute fields briefly. The boost chute's

gravity field went to zero; the boost field went to high. She

passed the chute opening and shot into free-grav, her black

hair streaming out behind her as she hit the first acceleration

pad hard. Rolling off her shoulder, she twisted her body into

a long, straight line and slammed, hands first, into the re-

direction pad at the next intersection. A roll and double thrust

with her feet and a small flexing of the boost-chute fields,

and she was already near top speed. Luckily, there were few

others in the chutes. As fast as she was going, she had to

watch the proximity IDs carefully. She could augment the

boost-chute fields only so much before the chute guards were

alerted. A quick twist, and she was past the two aliens who

floated leisurely along in the same direction. An inline tum-

ble, and she hit the next redirection pad just before that other

H'Mu—with her esper, she sensed him coming down the

opposite tunnel long before his arrival triggered a light on

the proximity grid. And then she was shooting up into the

exit passage, flashing through the graduated grav field, and

slowing abruptly as she stepped out on the corridor floor of

the institute. By the time her stomach settled back in place,

her hair was smoothed and she could check her lab access.

She let her breath out in relief. She was not yet late enough

to be kicked off the lists.

As she slipped into the lab, the professor stared coldly at

her with one of his three pairs of eyes. He did not stop speak-

ing—that was something, at least. Last time she had been

late, he had reprimanded her in front of the entire class. She

pulled her flashbook out of her pocket and expanded it, ig-

noring her lab partner's raised eyebrow. She would have to

hurry to catch up with the rest of the students, she thought,

slipping one of her wafer meals into her mouth and chewing

it mechanically as she jammed her temple jacks on. Her lab

partner, noting the circles under her eyes, powered up her

holotank for her. At least she got along better with her lab

partner than with the other students, she reflected. He was

not as status-conscious as the Federation students and, being

esper himself, was not envious of her E-level either. She had

helped him with his assignments more than once. Now, as

she tried to figure out how far behind she was, he silently

sent the base program to her on her flashbook.

Surprised, she returned her gratefulness. Even if he was

again concentrating on his own holotank, he would pick up

that esper message easily.

Imaging through her temple jacks, she created a series of

beams in her holotank like the ones on which the other stu-

dents were working. The projected space in front of her filled

with white lines. Automatically, Kiondili separated them into

colors, then added the focal lens through which all transmis-

sions had to pass. With her attention split between the as-

signment and her worries, it took a minute to get the

simulated lens in place. Six weeks, she thought. Six weeks

and she would no longer be able to stay at the institute. She

could not petition for another scholarship—she had already

studied for the maximum of six years on Federation funds—

and she had no sponsor to help her find permanent work on

this world. With her background, she thought with a sudden

surge of bitterness, she was not likely to find one. She tight-

ened the beams abruptly. Unless she started blocking her

emotions better, they were going to leak through her temple

'jacks and affect every transmission in this assignment. The

fine lines tuned in tighter as she concentrated, but they were

still fuzzy compared to the images in the other students'

holotanks. At least, with the work she was doing at the

spacedock, she understood this beam-tuning assignment bet-

ter than she would have a week earlier.

The professor rolled his middle pair of eyes toward one

student's flashscreen, then up to that student's holotank.

"Riun," he said sharply, "you are focusing the transitional

beams before they go through the lens. You should be tuning

the beams so that the lens does that work for you. Reset your

tank and show me the primary and secondary beam trajec-

tories for a ship with a twin hull..."

Kiondili's fingers tapped her temple jacks absently. Two

of the professor's scaly arms scrawled on the flashscreen.

Beside him, the images in the main holotank shifted in

response. Kiondili ignored the floating images. Instead,

she picked up the answer to his question from his care-

less projection—the professor rarely remembered to

damp his thoughts when he lectured in a lab. Even after

two years P-Cryss had not realized that she could pick

up his mental images as easily as if he were describing

them to her. As far as she knew, he did not suspect her

of being higher than an E-4 on the esper scales, and

she had tested low on purpose for the last three years.

As a scholarship student—and a human-mutant one at

that—she was treated with less than respect by all the

professors. If nothing else, this one's disdain for her

low social status had made his projections stronger and

even easier for her to read.

She smiled sardonically. If she had had properly trained

reader's skills, P-Cryss would have had to tighten his

blocks on all three of his brains—and Kiondili would not

have had to jump at double-shift night jobs on the docks.

A sensor with reader skills could have almost any job she

wanted, on almost any kind of ship. Any job, as long as

she was willing to rejoin the Trade Guild to get a faster-

than-light work rating. Last month, the guild's offer had

included both high-level training and an FTL rating. Even

with her grudge, Kiondili had had a hard time turning that

one down. But it was rejoin the guild or work temporary

positions on graveyard shifts, the kind of work done under

conditions that any guild worker would turn his or her nose

up at. Ayara alone knew how much Kiondili hated the

thought of rejoining the guild.

Traders, she spit in her mind. As the rancor leaked out her

temple jacks, the beams in her holotank flared up, and she

glared at them for a moment before upping the damp on her

persona adjust. Even with the damp, it took a few seconds

for the beams to fade back to normal. Traders, she cursed

more calmly. Murderers. The guild had blacklisted her par-

ents and then blown them and half their F-class trade ship to

dust before bothering to read the ship's log. A mistake, the

guild said to the fifteen-year-old girl they had left stranded

on Jovani. They were terribly sorry. The apology meant lit-

tle. Without her parents, without a sponsor on this world,

Kiondili Wae had a Federation status little better than that of

a slave. The blacklisting had been cleared, but it remained

in the logs—and that history had destroyed any chance for

her to find a sponsor outside the guild. Even with the edu-

cation she had now, seven years later, she stood a better

chance of solar surfing in deep space than landing a job on

an FTL ship.

A Moal, one of those skittish aliens that looked like a

bipedal avian, sang its question from the back of the lab, and

its clear tones caught at Kiondili's ears. The frequencies re-

minded her of her transmission work, and she stared down

at her flashbook. Doodles. That was all she had entered for

the last three days. She scowled, and the professor turned his

watery yellow gaze on her. Kiondili, still struggling with

the sloppy images in her holotank, accidentally let one of

the navigation fields collapse. The beam bounced in the

air, its edges no longer sharp. Femtorads, she swore silently.

Working that double night shift for the last four days had

exhausted her. If she did not start concentrating soon, she

would waste this entire lab period. If she had gotten to

class on time, she would have had this problem set up prop-

erly before she had to focus the beam. Growling, she snapped

images and commands through the jacks clinging to her tem-

ples. But the generator remained obstinately jammed. The

edges of the beam frayed more each second. With a sudden

flare, the tiny beam began to disperse. Kiondili ground her

teeth. If the professor had not been watching, she could have

reset the fields without touching the generator. But the teach-

er's second set of eyes continued to observe her holotank

while he answered the Moal's question. Finally he glanced

away. Quickly, Kiondili reached mentally beyond the head-

set. It took only a second to damp the generator's nearly

useless fields until she had control of the beam herself. Now

she could manipulate the fields properly. P-Cryss would not

even know. She hid a humorless grin. The beam in the hol-

otank, fuzzy and thick at first, sharpened at her directions

until a hair-thin light shot like a spear through the floating

tank that simulated space.

The professor had moved up beside her as she worked,

and now his middle set of eyes rolled, four lids blinking down

over each eye in succession. Of his six flexible arms, all but

two were wrapped tightly around his body. He regarded her

for a long moment. "Interesting recovery, H'Mu Wae."

Kiondili's face became expressionless. The professor

moved on to the next holotank, but his words hung in the air

behind him. She stared at her beam without seeing it. The

formal use of the term H'Mu was meant to put her in her

place as a human-mutant, she knew. The use of only her last

name was the professor's reminder to her that she was not

even a full-paying student—not worth the designation of more

than one name. At least he had not called her a Mu in front

of the others. Coming from P-Cryss, the slang term for mu-

tant was almost always an insult.

Mu. Kiondili rolled the word around her tongue as she

stared at her holotank. H'Mu mutant. For nine hundred years

H'Mu had been engineering themselves to fit the environs of

their colonies. It was cheaper than trying to change an entire

planet's biosphere for a few colonists. Among the H'Mu,

Kiondili Wae was not unusual. P-Cryss used the term H'Mu

in that tone only because he knew it irked her.

Engineered mutation had given Kiondili silver-gray skin—

and a sensitivity to particle fields that made her a natural for

sensor jobs. When she was a child, first learning to use her

biofields, she had adjusted only tiny fields, like those of her

persona adapt: strengthening the repeller fields when aliens

came too close, increasing the range of the persona damp

when local, untuned fields irritated her skin and hair. As she

sat now in the lab, the short, fine gray hair that covered her

body realigned with an uneven shift of the holotank genera-

tor. She compensated absently, and the floating curves

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LIGHTWINGTaraK.HarperADelReyBookBALLANTINEBOOKS•NEWYORKSaleofthisbookwithoutafrontcovermaybeunauthorized.Ifthisbookiscoverless,itmayhavebeenreportedtothepublisheras“unsoldordestroyed'andneithertheauthornorthepublishermayhavereceivedpaymentforit.ADelReyBookPublishedbyBallantineBooksCopyright©1992byT...

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