Boxmaster's Home
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

"What do you mean, you snuck away?" repeated Ida Limms, sounding bemused and outraged. "Have you no sense of military discipline?" She tucked her fingers into her belt and leaned on the bedroom dresser.

"No." Lyle Odirin shucked his last undergarment and peeled open the smooth, gleaming black sheets on Ida's bed. Arranging pillows, he added, "Guild discipline, however, is another matter. I'm here to uphold a Guild tradition - the-horny-boxmaster-strikes-again. Last night was too short - "

"Lyle!"

"That smudge on your face stands out beautifully when you blush. If you hurry, I think I might be able to wait until you get here."

"That's disgusting." She turned and flounced into her bathroom.

Odirin reflected that flowing skirts flounced better than tight uniform pants. He preferred the pants.

A moment later, she popped back out to stuff her equipment belt into her helmet on the dresser. Ida wasn't just a theoretical engineer. She was a hands-dirty engineer, the type Odirin liked best. Though she was now head of her department, the eyes and ears of the flagship, she refused to sit behind her desk and enjoy the power. Today, she'd been out on the hull supervising a crew repairing a sensor dish. Odirin had been scared out of his mind when a piece broke away setting off alarms all over Hytril and crews scrambled to rescue the EVA team.

His emotional reaction had spoiled three hours worth of the medics careful measurements of his nervous system. They thought he was just tense over what they were about to do to him. He hadn't explained. But Yran had come running with the news that Ida was safe.

As the shower whined, he squirmed into an inviting pose. A boxmaster's work with shard usually built up a sexual charge, hence the galactic reputation. Only - this feeling was more personal.

It's not just that she was in danger. He couldn't be in love with Ida because then he'd be in the same horrible quandary Yran lived in, with a serious commitment outside the Guild. If that started to happen, he'd have to cut her out of his life, so he told himself, They're right. I'm more scared of this damn experimental surgery than I want myself to know, so I'm just sublimating it. Vie va la sublimation!

The mission, he could handle. Except for the legal angle, it wasn't that different from everything else he did on a daily basis. But the disguise! Now that he'd heard all the details, that had become something else.

Guild medics working with the military ones, inventing this disguise as they went along, had made him sign a dozen quit-claims and releases, and three dozen informed consent forms. The Guild medics had made it clear that they didn't know what they were doing and couldn't predict the long-range results. But the Intelligence medics were sure it would work for a few weeks.

"You see, the problem isn't making you resemble a Kethsem. That's elementary. And we can give you enough of the Kethsem senses so you won't blow it by missing obvious cues. The real problem will be reversing it all. We're making this out of your DNA. It'll grow into you. If we had another month, we could flag-and-tag every cell so we could kill it out of you with an injection. That's how we usually do it with human operatives. But there's no time."

Odirin had put up a brave front. "It's not a problem. This will only take a few days. That leaves weeks of safety margin." And he'd signed every last form they offered.

Then he noticed how bored the military medics were while the Guild medics were alternately skittish and frantic. If it had been the other way around, he wouldn't have had a qualm. But the Guild medics knew how delicate his mental lock on his shard could be. Even if he came back alive, he might lose his shards. They never said it, but he knew that's what they were thinking. And they knew he knew. The military medics had already written him off. Cold bastards.

Ida emerged ready for action, and at the sight of her his mind and body leaped to attention.

She eyed the evidence. "I thought you said you couldn't wait. Or is that the second round already?"

"Get over here and find out."

It took twice through before he could slow down and pay her back for her patience.

He woke a few hours later with his feisty engineer snuggled up against his chest and shivering in her sleep. When he tried to pull the sheet up, he found it was ripped. He didn't remember that happening.

As he struggled with it, she woke, yanked on the sheet, found the hole and said, "When did that happen?" Then, instead of fighting with it, she ordered the temperature up.

"Now, you want to tell me what that was all about?" she asked, wrapping herself in his arms.

"Not really," he answered, enjoying the comfortable armful of woman as if it were the last time - ever.

"Don't you think you owe me?"

"Well. It's classified," he evaded lamely.

"I'm cleared. Every bit of traffic on and off this ship goes through my department. I know there's a bunch of Guild medics here and they've been shooting memos off in Guild codes as if making book on whether you'll die or not. But you're definitely not sick. Shall I tell them that?"

"They know."

"Lyle, something's got you spooked. Talk to me."

"I was maybe a bit over-eager because that's the last time I'll get to do that in a while - maybe a long while. It's experimental surgery. That's really all I can say, and I shouldn't have said that."

"Oh, God."

"Hey, come on."

"I'm sorry." She dashed a tear away and settled against him, arms tight around his body.

She didn't ask. For three quarters of an hour, she didn't ask. She just shook. Silently.

At length, he said, "They're going to make me pass for a - well, a nonhuman. They'll alter my hearing, put in new retinas, change the spectrum sensitivity pattern and grow a bunch of nerves into my brain to serve all this stuff. But they say the most dangerous part is my sense of smell. Nobody understands the connection between human emotion and smell/taste because it's so idiosyncratic.

"They'll mess with my autonomic nervous system too. There was something about compensating for the lousy diet, but that's pretty standard - vitamin producing nanites in the thin layers of fake fat. The padding will disguise my bone structure. The simulation looks - weird." He didn't mention the fake sarone or the fake pheromone release nanites buried in the fat. That would be a dead give-away.

"You're talking deep-cover - Lyle, there isn't any species in the Union like that." She sat up straight. "They're sending you into Sxome territory! Lyle, that's illegal! The Guild - "

"Don't jump to conclusions."

"I'm no medic, but I know senses! That's my specialty, you idiot. Lyle, you're not a spy, you're a boxmaster. You're not trained for this. Whatever possessed you to volunteer for - "

He kissed her. "I worry about you, too. I just wanted you to know that if I don't function quite the same afterward - it isn't because you've lost your touch."

"You mean - it's really experimental? Lyle, tell them no and get your tail off this ship. They can't make you - "

"Hey, it's an adventure, a sure-fire headline style, history making adventure. I wouldn't miss out on it for the world. I'd blow my reputation."

"Screw your reputation. Some things are more imp- "

He kissed her gently. "Blow first, then screw. Deal?"

"You talk like an engineer with a pressure problem."

"What a dirty mind you have."

"Admire it while I think of a way to smear your reputation so you don't have to defend it."

Odirin groaned and shifted position, astonished that she'd inspired him again. "You want to keep my reputation a secret from the galaxy."

"Better believe it. A completely private reputation."

"That's an oxymoron."

"I'll show you oxymoron. I'll use up your oxy and turn you into a moron."

She did.

Yran was right. Even human women were part ral. This one was more aggressive than most. In the languorous twilight of aftermath, the thought floated through the edge of his mind that he liked it just fine in Ida, but flinched from it in Lii. Maybe with Ida, he knew how to agress back at her, but with Lii he was afraid of hurting him. Lii wasn't female and didn't have a female's strength. Of course, he wasn't male, either. What the hell. Sleep took him and when he woke he had forgotten all about it.

He made it back barely before the medics discovered he'd gone. But he hadn't needed the night's sleep. He spent that day - and the next and the next - under anesthetic.

#

The Kethsem home planet still looked ordinary from space, at least from far outside the system. But instruments showed the intensification of orbital activity far beyond anything Kethsem's undeveloped economy could support.

Odirin slowed their approach while the ship's onboard system - specially installed by Union Intelligence - analyzed the data from their Intelligence-supplied sensors and presented it on the screens before the two boxmasters.

As the first images took form on their control consoles, Yran exclaimed, "They've built a space station! It's bristling with weaponry. Look at that energy scan. We can't get past that!"

"Look at this reading. The station's not fully operational yet. Yran, this mission plan was made by Union Intelligence - the very same people who planned our cover identities. As I recall, they haven't exactly won your personal respect and admiration."

"Don't mock my judgment, Boxmaster. You're senior up here, but you're supposed to be staying in ansha charac - "

"Once we're on the ground, you're the boss. I know. I wasn't mocking your judgment; I was just teasing, Yran, to make the business go smoother. Besides, after we get down there, I won't get a chance to say anything human for days."

"So you'll learn to tease a neral like any ansha would tease a neral."

Odirin slowed the ship even more, waiting for the scans to complete. "So what should I have said?" They were speaking the Oaurdin dialect they had been using exclusively since they docked their ships on Hytril. And Yran was right. Odirin had never heard Tsjaim take a dig at Yran's judgment, even in jest. But Tsjaim could tease with the best when challenged.

Yran grinned, a thin-lipped grimace that Odirin had worked hard to imitate. "You should have said, 'Well, we could just dock at the station. Then you could seduce them.' Then I'd say something like, 'Oh, no, that's your department. Have you looked in a mirror lately?' And you'd say, 'But I belong to Lii. I guess you'll have to think of another plan.' And I'd say something like, 'Lii would be happier if we work on it together.' Then we'd figure something out."

With sudden dark suspicion, Odirin asked, "Is every business transaction on Kethsem fraught with sexual innuendo?" If so, I don't stand a chance even ordering a meal in a cafe.

"Well . . ..come to think of it, yes. After all, the primary motive and objective in business is to please the ral."

"Not to make money?"

"The more money you make, the more children you can afford, the happier your ral will be." Yran made an adjustment as data flowed across the screen in front of him.

"I should have thought of that." Odirin watched the data, looking for a way through the orbital defenses. There had to be a way.

Yran commented, "There are a lot of unhappy ral down there right now."

Kethsem society was not driven by the urge to get more money, or power, or prestige or status symbols than the neighbors. All a Kethsem wanted was to keep his own ral happy. Addictive drugs didn't riddle their society because there was nothing more addictive or mood elevating than a happy ral, and pregnant or nursing ral were the happiest of all. How many children were enough for a ral was idiosyncratic to each ral, and rationing a ral's pregnancies was the neral's job.

Odirin had lived with that for years, though Lii, being sterile, was hardly typical. Even so, Odirin's new sensory equipment wouldn't make ral mood seem any more important to him - though it might help him notice it. This whole masquerade depended on his remembering to react correctly to what his senses detected. If he could just learn to interpret the odors, he might succeed.

Yran's hands danced over his console as he studied the preliminary data on the orbital traffic's armament. "I don't understand why it seems so strange to you. Almost everything humans do is fraught with sexual innuendo. Except when it's blatant. Though I admit I sometimes miss even the most blatant messages, especially from human females. Like Chief Limms. She says things that aren't about what she's really trying to talk about."

Odirin had interrupted them talking about him, so he knew which conversation had made Yran squirm. "I know. She was just trying to pry information out of you that I wouldn't give her. She wasn't coming on to you." Fumbling to express it in Oaurdin, he was sure he got the correct idiom.

"Language lesson - only a ral can come on to anyone. It's a grammatical error to say 'she came on to me'. Scal can't do that. Only ral can. There are other phrases - some not acceptable in public - for the process of transmitting a ral's desires. You've seen me do that for Lii - but only in the privacy of the family. Since we won't have family, just delete the subject from your lexicon. You won't need it. You really won't need it if we can't find a way down."

"Don't give up. The scans aren't half complete yet." He displayed a preliminary schematic of the system's traffic and analyzed the orbits. "Just remember while we're down there that I've probably misunderstood everything I've seen you do with Lii. That's why I have such a hard time dealing with Lii when he starts talking about getting me into his bed."

"He's not teasing about that, you know. He's serious."

"I know. That's what makes it so hard. I may not spend my whole life trying to please him, but Yran I'd never do anything to hurt him."

He was rewarded with an olfactory burst of Kethsem pleasure and a rare smile. "I know. I saw you convince him of that absolutely."

That kiss. He ran his hand through his implanted sarone.

"Don't do that," said Yran. "It looks like it hurts."

"It does." Unlike hair, the feathery sarone strands were replete with living nerves, though they hadn't grown into his brain yet. Still, forcing movement felt awful.

When the stuff plastered itself against his skull in response to his emotions, the scalp muscles ached and that made his teeth hurt. When the scalp muscles fluffed the sarone out, the muscles behind his eyes twitched. When he was tired, his eye muscles would spasm sending piercing shocks into his brain. He'd taken to running his fingers through the imitation sarone to shift the ache around.

The military surgeons had shrugged off his complaints. "It's becoming connected to your autonomic nervous system - involuntary like for the Kethsem. If we fix the cross-connections, we'll never be able to reverse this mess."

And mess it was. He emitted the right scent cues for an ansha. But Yran was critical of the effect. Odirin chemicals telegraphed his emotions accurately but his emotions weren't reactions to Yran's emissions - except for that first time Yran had laid eyes on Lyle-the-ansha. Yran had emitted one, brief, searing wave of sexual response - unsustainable without a ral, but recognizable from the brief tutorial he'd been given. Odirin had responded with a humanly inappropriate shock and embarrassment.

The Medics had explained that, as the nerves grew into place, Odirin's subconscious and autonomic nervous system would learn appropriate reactions to his new perceptions, but that would be a danger sign. "Don't worry, though, you won't be there that long. It would take almost half a year."

Yran finally stipulated that Odirin might pass in a crowd, and would seem Kethsem to the Sxome invaders. But there was no way he'd pass as Kethsem to a Kethsem in a closed, indoor space. Not if someone addressed him directly. Most assuredly not if that someone were ral.

The medics had suppressed his human scents with a series of injections, but that, too, hadn't satisfied Yran.

"To do more," the medics said, "would endanger your health and the mission." Yran had suggested a scented soap which would misdirect any Kethsem other than a lover.

Yran wasn't satisfied with Odirin's eyes, either. "You've made him blind!" Yran had complained to the medic while Odirin had studied Yran's coloring - not even having words for the colors he was perceiving. With the way skin temperature shifted skin coloring, he now knew why Yran was so critical of human sartorial taste.

"At least," the Guild surgeon had replied defensively, "he won't blunder around half-blind at high noon."

"But what about at night!"

They shrugged.

Without eyeshields which would mark him as having been offworld, Odirin's optic nerve could be burned out by normal lighting, so the ship the Union space marines had supplied for the mission had Kethsem spectrum lighting. The techs had been forced to retune the display screens for Odirin's impaired night vision.

Studying Odirin's deficiency during this process, Yran had conceded that some ansha had that same pattern of infrared color perception deficiency which caused the same sort of night blindness Odirin had, so Odirin's handicap wouldn't mark him. But he would be memorable for it.

The only alteration Yran had approved of had been to Odirin's hearing which worked perfectly. The implant that allowed him to hear Kethsem supersonics could be turned off so his voice would sound normal to him. Yran liked his voice, so they hadn't changed that. It was Odirin's one consolation.

While the surgeons had worked on Odirin, Yran had taken out his frustrations on perfecting their cover, driving even Union Intelligence perfectionists crazy.

Yran had redesigned Odirin's wardrobe and discarded the quick-learn Oaurdin language tapes Intelligence had obtained from some xenologists. He had recorded new tapes in his own accent, and then re-designed their cover identities and all the props.

Odirin had overheard the Intelligence people cursing Yran for a meddling amateur who should have enough sense to follow orders, but when Odirin pressed them, they admitted that a native ought to know what would work. They were annoyed, but they were taking notes. Odirin knew, just from living with Lii, that the xenologists who congratulated themselves on penetrating the depths of the closed Kethsem society had never even scratched the surface.

The only item Yran had not forced them to change was the ship they were sitting in.

It was the same Union make and model the invaders had captured by the thousands for their own use. To transform the ship into a Sxome ship, they had only to insert the newest enemy codes into the ID beacon.

The ship was a small cargo hauler, not the tiny, swift item Odirin would have expected spies to use. But of course, the occupation defenders would expect spies to arrive in highly maneuverable stealth speedsters. The rugged cargo hauler with landing capability would blend right in with the enemy traffic. They'd be so conspicuous they'd be invisible.

However, as their first sensor scan of the system finally completed, their screens showed only armed military orbital traffic. No civilian freighters like theirs. Nothing going down except from the space station to the spaceport.

Yran said, "This isn't going to work. There's no way to blend with the traffic and - "

That's it! "Try this idea. We can't be inconspicuous, so we'll be conspicuous. We go in fast, broadcast a Mayday - I think Intelligence supplied us with the codes for it - and spin down out of control. Fake a crash. I'm that good a pilot and you know it. Once we're below their surveillance, we just land as planned and proceed."

"That satellite will track us."

"Look at this." He threw a screen full of data from their scanners onto Yran's console. "They're still not fully rigged for planet-side scan. They'll lose us close to the ground. They can't afford to spend much on hunting one of their own cargo-haulers that's a total loss anyway. They're probably understaffed for controlling the whole planet, and they haven't been here long enough to pacify and nail down everything. There have to be trouble spots that will get priority over a crashed cargo ship."

Yran sighed and argued for a stealthy approach.

"Look, Yran. If we try to sneak in, and they spot us, they'll allocate unlimited resources to find us because we'd be announcing ourselves as enemy. But if we're just one of their own, they'll file a report and forget us."

Yran contemplated the datascreens glumly. Odirin studied him with all his new sensory equipment. Because he hadn't been with Lii long enough this time, Yran's pheromone output had been fading until the medics dosed him with synthetics to bring up his coloring and output so he wouldn't seem as if he hadn't been near a ral in months - but the treatments had made him nauseous and short tempered. He was irritated now.

"Come on, Yran. Talk to me. Don't assume I can read your silence like Tsjaim does."

Absently, Yran corrected, "The idiom is give-out, not talk-to-me."

"Oh. Give out then."

"It seems to me that the invaders would seek one of their own who had crashed more vigorously than they would seek a stranger."

"Ah! Well." Over the years, they'd had a few useless conversations about strategy and tactics, about war and armies and territorial invasions. This was no time to rehash that cultural blind-spot. "It's war, Yran. That's just how military commanders learn to think."

"But you're not a military commander. How would you know?"

"Remember when I was teaching you to use a spacesuit? And I discovered to my horror that your Academy instructors had never taught you to inspect points because every kid grows up inspecting their own sports equipment for worn out impact shield generators? But on Kethsem, they don't have violent contact sports and they don't have fancy technology to waste on sports equipment. So you hadn't a clue what to look for in a worn out spacesuit."

"It was a lesson I will never forget."

"Well, this is the same sort of thing. I grew up on war stories, real and imaginary, historical and futuristic, human and Filiksan and - oh, and even mixed species. Most of games played in the Union are based on war - everything from board games to team sports. I don't have to think about it, Yran - I just know how a commander who's a winner has to think and act. You throw your resources against the enemy, and you expect to take casualties. And you carefully calculate how much damage you can accept in order to achieve a particular objective.

"They won't chase a lost cargo. They'll work every able bodied soldier overtime to find a spy."

Yran laced his fingers behind his neck and eased straining muscles. "Such behavior wouldn't please any ral I ever knew. Spies are worthless. Cargo is valuable and your own people are even more valuable."

"That's probably why Kethsem never invented war."

"So," said Yran, "when we go in, they're going to detect us and they're going to chase us. The only hope we have is to limit the amount of effort they put into chasing us."

"And hope they don't get lucky."

Yran slanted a thin-lipped smile at Odirin. "Lii would hate this plan." But his acceptance floated on the air for Odirin to read.

"It's a good thing Lii's not here, then. We just won't tell him about it." Odirin sat forward and began working with the ship's systems, astonished he could read Yran so clearly on this. I'm going to get the hang of this - we're going to pull it off.

"Of course I'll tell Lii all about it," said Yran manipulating his board.

"Why? It wouldn't make him happy."

Yran craned his neck to see the data scrolling past on Odirin's screen, copied some of it and set an analysis running. "To fail to tell Lii as much about this as Lii wants to know would be to undermine the structure that makes Wesdayne work. The trick is to pick the right time and circumstance. In general, any emotional issue will end up in the ral's domain eventually, and the storms that follow just have to be endured. It's the neral's job to arrange things so the family can endure the storms. But one thing everyone learns very young - never lie to a ral."

"In other words, I should keep my nose out of the neral's business."

"Yes."

While Odirin dealt with being miffed by that, Yran asked, mystified by his reaction, "Isn't being ansha hard enough? You want to be everything else, too?"

"I guess that's human nature."

Together, they dug through the wealth of top secret data in the ship's memory and created their scenario. They gave their Mayday a hiccup, as if communications had suffered failures, and they introduced an energy spike into the drive fields, cycling it by randomizer. They created a recorded message - a pathetic call for help detailing the onboard disaster that had overtaken them. Lacing the message with artistic fade-outs, they planted the impression that their cargo was perishable foodstuffs, and they'd been in space long enough for it to rot.

When Yran finally grasped what Odirin was doing, he added the finishing touch - radiation, enough to indicate that the crew was either dead or dying. There would be no reason to comb the trackless mountains to find the crashed ship, but if they did search, they'd look for a radiation blip - which wouldn't be there.

When they finished, it was truly a work of art.

"I think," allowed Yran, "this is going to work." There was a new brightness to his pheromone emission Odirin hadn't detected before.

"So let's go. We've got work to do."

Yran secured himself in the reclining cradle. "Go."

Odirin fired them into approach orbit.

Yran handled the internal monitors while Odirin took the pilot's and astrogator's controls.

Tension mounted as they breached the perimeter and their passage triggered the Sxome's automated tracker buoys.

Yran reported, "Cargo compartment temperature and gravity nominal. The rover is secure." The ground vehicle was loaded with everything they'd need to establish their cover identities, and they were dressed for the parts they were to play. They couldn't be more ready.

"Weapons secured, powered down, undetectable except for auxiliary," Yran reported. "The aux port is open. I'm simulating the radiation leakage from that port now."

"Good, make it increase slowly so it's still growing when we get close enough for them to read it."

"Introducing stutter to the deflector shields. They won't be able to read us."

"Good - here comes the first full ID query. It's automated."

Their system answered the query with the preset static-spackled message, only their Sxome Alliance military clearance going through undistorted. On the second round, even that got a wipe-out in the middle.

They were also carrying, in a special hold, oversized interstellar tightbeam equipment with loads of backup power so they could get their information out even if they couldn't get themselves out. Odirin hadn't liked that provision from the start, and now the damn thing was a hazard because the power packs would be detectable on the ground.

In case the orbital probe recorded the immense overage in power aboard the grocery-wagon, Odirin had listed stasis preservation equipment on the fake manifest - and had claimed it was failing. He let the power packs for the tightbeamer emit bursts of static, as if the stasis equipment was sparking.

"Now, Yran, hand them the radiation - be sure it's not enough to seem dangerous. Atmosphere contact in fifteen seconds. Here we go."

Yran's hands flew, his sarone fluffed out in a halo around his head and he smelled of enjoyment. "Inboard secure. Radiation trail detectable."

They grazed the upper atmosphere. "We've picked up chasers. There are three of them. Hang on." He engaged the evasive pattern, and the internal gravity lagged and lagged again as the craft strained to lift and dive, swerve and zigzag in the increasing gravity well. Odirin's Kethsem hearing registered ominous squeals from the ship's superstructure. ""What's that noise?"

"Ignore it!" Yran snapped.

So, ships landing in atmosphere always made noise like this. Right. Sure. How would I know that? He turned his ears off and went back to work.

"Shit!" muttered Odirin. "They're shooting at us!"

"We overdid it?"

"They don't like radiation pollution any better than we do. They're gaining. They're too close. Brace yourself."

Odirin hit his evasive program which he'd taken from his own ship. The ship shuddered and joints screamed. They dipped deeper into atmosphere than speed allowed but all three of the pursuers stuck.

He had programmed their descent to end in the mountains overlooking the planetary capital city and offworld spaceport on the high plateau known as the Kendai. Desperately trying to shake the pursuit, Odirin overshot the mountains and skimmed over a swamp, streaking out across the Kendai.

When he had a chance to look, he saw the ground under them suddenly fall away into rolling wooded drop stretching down into distant mists.

Staying low, Odirin scorched the treetops then threw the ship into a climbing turn that defied the laws of physics. The ship's system sounded alarms. He pushed for altitude, and still playing lame duck, he lurched back up onto the edge of the plateau. Checking, he found two fighters still on his tail and a rising smoke plume down-slope.

And he was out of options.

Then he saw it. A small lake nestled among three heavily wooded hummocks. It's a chance. "Yran, blow the com-hatch! Now." Hesitation. "Do it!" He jerked the ship around in a crazy turn, then zagged back around one of the hills, temporarily hiding them from their pursuit. "Now!" If the satellite has lost us . . .

Yran complied.

Odirin swept in over the lake, as low as he dared in the clumsy craft, then climbed angling the open communications hatch downward trying to jettison the com into the water.

It didn't work.

He swept back and looped the loop again, wondering where the damn pursuit had got to.

This cargo ship didn't handle at all like his own ship. It wallowed and fought the demanding program, and with that hatch open, it tended to pull. But it was a souped-up version of the cargo hauler, a military attack vessel in disguise and it was fast.

He found the pursuit circling way behind them. Bewildered? God I hope so.

He went into a sudden, jerking turn, pulled the nose up, then did a fast barrel roll to shift the weight of the com equipment as the gravity lagged. When he had slammed the communicator hard against its makeshift moorings, he reversed steerage and did another open-hatch-down pass across the lake, building speed to create an immense wind across the open hatch - suck the damn thing out. The whistle rose to a scream, and he felt the air-pressure fall. Alarms whooped.

He ignored them turned and lined up for another pass over the lake. He thought he heard the moorings giving way.

"They've spotted us," said Yran. "Here they come."

"I see them." And it was perfect.

He showed them his tail, and just as he crossed the lake again, he wagged it clumsily like a lame duck trying to splash-down in the too-small lake.

The equipment and its enormous overburden of power pack tore loose from the moorings. It tumbled free of the ship and into the lake just where he wanted it.

Odirin felt the guidance system slip at the weight loss. The explosion spouted lake water half a mile into the air and he rode the shock wave, peeling off when he was hidden by the static-filled mushroom cloud erupting high into the stratosphere.

He ignored the alarms and just missing the treetops, he aimed the bucking craft at a cleft between two hills.

"They couldn't stop!" yelled Yran over the noise. "They flew right into the explosion!"

Odirin fought the air turbulence in the narrow cleft, and had to kill the deflectors to keep from being thrown out of control as the safeties tried to avoid the rock walls. They emerged on the other side of the hill into a huge sandstone cup - meteor crater? - rimmed by wooded hills. They had to set down fast, before they were spotted again. Then they'd be assumed to have crashed in the lake along with at least one of the pursuit craft. "There!" He pointed at a clearing far enough ahead that he could slow for a landing. "We'll go down behind those trees."

Yran said, "No! Not here! Keep going. You can get out of here between those cliffs." He pointed to the left. "There, see the gap?"

There was a gap defined by two rainbow colored sandstone cliffs, and it was a little wider than the one they'd entered through. "You have a lot of confidence in my flying." The safties were still off. He took aim and ignored the system's protests. The sheer cliffs scraped by on either side as the gap narrowed around them. It was a tight fit.

When they were through, Yran shouted over the noise, "Keep going. You don't want to tangle with the Vintsil clan, not after destroying their lake. See the highway up there? Just beyond it is a logging trail. Follow it up, you'll find a big meadow. It's not Vintsil's anymore."

Odirin eyed his displays. The locator had finally caught up with him. "No meadow on this map."

"It's there."

It was, but the logging trail had long been abandoned. It was so overgrown, it wasn't even a dirt track anymore, just a ribbon of weeds choked with whipcord saplings. Odirin set the ship down - gently - at the edge of the meadow, half under the trees.

"Nice flying," whispered Yran into the dead silence.

"Yes," said Odirin in Oaurdin. With still shaking hands he brought up the external sensors looking for sign of surveillance. Nothing. "I think we made it."

"I've got the internal systems silenced and the ports closed. We're not emitting so much as one fast neutrino an hour. If they lost optical on us after that blast, well, unless the orbitals tracked us, they'll never find us."

"We broke the orbital lock with that first maneuver."

"There's enough ore in this hill under us that the ship might not be too conspicuous - of course, it depends how hard they look. But I think we've done what you set out to do."

"I'm glad you have some idea where we are because according to this map, we're in unmapped territory." The locator arrow was blinking on a grayed area. Map symbols showed just at the top of his screen.

"We're on Vintsil's edge of the Kendai. Who needs a map? You can't get lost on the Kendai. Come on, let's bury the ship in deadfall, and then get the rover down to the highway before dark. We can drive through the night."

"You can drive through the night."

"Right. Don't let me forget that. Let's go. We've got work to do. We're a long way from where we'd planned to be."

Before he shut the map down, Odirin estimated it at maybe a good eight hundred miles. The length of the plateau. Of course, it could be farther than that crawling along the roads that wandered from village to village. The map they'd been given was from a satellite photo, an enlargement of their target area and covered hundreds of square miles. They'd missed. He checked to make sure there was no map segment of this area in the data banks, then went to secure the ship.

First they extracted the land vehicle from the hold - no mean feat as the hatch had ended up against a large tree. They had to saw a notch in the tree bark to clear the edge of the hatch, and then they scraped the side of the rover getting it down the ramp.

Yran dismissed the damage airily. "Adds authenticity."

But Odirin insisted on scouring every last bit of the rover's paint from the tree so anyone who found the ship wouldn't know what had damaged the tree. With luck a little rain would eradicate their tracks down the mountain. "Break our connection with the ship and our chances of survival double - at least."

"But," said Yran, "you ditched the tightbeamer. Now we've got to get out with the boxes, or Union Command gets nothing."

"Yeah." While Yran maneuvered the landrover down the abandoned logging trail to the road, Odirin finished the camouflage work.

Long shadows were darkening the hillside when Odirin picked his way carefully down the tracks the landrover had left. The thing actually rested its weight on four pneumatic tires. The ground was hard, not taking much of an impression. It had been awhile since it had rained. If it's muddy when we return, we won't be able to drive up there. But when he turned to look, there was no trace of the ship.

Yran met him halfway down the hill. "Can you still see?" They had taken Yran's eyeshields out, too, so they wouldn't betray him as having been offworld, so his vision was Kethsem normal, not enhanced.

"Not very well." Odirin's foot rolled out from under him and he danced a few steps before regaining balance.

"Here," Yran came up on one side and folded his arm under Odirin's right arm. "Step with me, right foot first."

By the time they reached the rover, it was pitch dark. Yran started to help Odirin into the front seat, but Odirin objected. The steering assembly was in the middle of the back seat which was raised above the front seat to give the driver a good vantage. "I want to get used to looking down onto the road over the front seat, so I can drive this thing."

"Well, climb up then." Yran swung up behind the steering assembly. It was a thick trunk of pipe topped by a very large circle. With a few deft flicks and touches, Yran had lights and motive power engaged. It was loud. Moments later they were zipping along a rough but serviceable road that might - by some wild stretch of imagination - be called a highway.

It was two lanes, roughly paved, and marked with painted stripes. Yran explained the road markings as they passed them - they were different from those he'd seen in the cities. It really was a highway, even though, as Yran said, they were hours from anything resembling civilization and maybe two days drive from the edge of their maps. The rover didn't go very fast, and it ran on a liquefied fossil extract that stank horribly.

"You get used to it," said Yran when Odirin commented on the smell.

The neral settled back in his seat, comfortably relaxed, driving with only one hand on the mechanical guidance system and from time to time he worked a completely manual gear system with his feet and one hand. Odirin knew from his few sessions in the simulator trying to master this vehicle that one twitch of Yran's hand could send them over the side of the road. He couldn't see the bottom of the chasm to his right and didn't want to. He turned on his ears and settled into character.

"Because we're so far off target, fuel may turn out to be a problem," worried Odirin. "How far can we go on a charge?"

"Tank," corrected Yran flatly. "About six hours. I figure we'll make it to a zhi-orca before then."

"Right."

"What's wrong?"

"Vocabulary."

"An hour is - "

"No, what we'll make it to. Fueling station?" Odirin had serviced his box emplacements on this planet for years, but the locals always provided everything he needed. Until Yran had started his education on Hytril, Odirin had thought he was familiar with the planet.

"No. Camp ground run by the zhi-orca clan. There's usually services - fuel, food, information." Yran stopped at an intersection in pitch darkness. There was a sign but it was bent in half as if something large had hit it.

Without even peering at the sign, Yran turned left onto another narrow road with a bad surface. "I camped the zhi-orca circuit out here last year during a layover and they're still as good as ever. The one at the junction up ahead should be open even this late in the season if Union Intelligence guessed right and the invaders haven't destroyed everything yet. We can camp there even if it's closed. If there's anyone around, we'll find out what's happening.

"That's why I demanded the rover the minute I saw it in Hytril's hold. We'll blend right in at the zhi-orcas. They wanted to give us a low-slung city car that would bog down two lengths off the paved road and wouldn't carry any cargo. We'd never have gotten it down the logging trail, and if we'd landed where we'd planned, the city car would never have climbed the switchback road out of there. We could tow a caravan on unpaved roads with this thing or climb the Kenvai in an ice storm."

Unpaved roads? "Camp grounds and zhi-orca weren't in my briefing."

"Aren't any up in the mountains where we were supposed to land. Up there, you camp rough - no amenities. That city car would have been a death-trap even if we could have gotten it out onto a real road. In those mountains, you pack in on druchdrun - if you intend to live through it. A car doesn't make friends with the gritsh." Yran emitted faint waves of thoughtfulness. Odirin was amazed he could detect the neral's reactions even against the hydrocarbon smell. "Nothing could have made their plan work. And now that we've got to cross the Kendai, it's a very good thing I had the rover equipped for camping as part of our cover story. It'll add authenticity if the equipment looks well used. We'll arrive at the city looking like we've camped across the Kendai not landed in a space ship."

Yran slowed as they approached a point where another highway joined.

"There are no signs," said Odirin.

"I'd guess that's Vintsil's idea for confusing the invaders. Most anyone else would realize they'd have satellite locators and auto-maps. The Sxome probably can't read anyway." He eased into the traffic pattern.

Up to then, they hadn't seen another vehicle. Now there was traffic in both directions, visible to Odirin as spots of light, mostly in the infra-red colors. A few minutes down the new road, the road bed split, the oncoming traffic disappearing behind a hill, their side spreading into three lanes. Odirin peered up at a truck that paced them. It was packed with what seemed to be straw. Intriguing aroma.

Yran said, "Doesn't look good. Should be more trucks this time of night."

"At least there are some. Means they've let some support activity continue."

Yran tucked their rover up in the wake of a big truck with slatted sides. "Use his vacuum to increase our cruising range." The headlights caught an animal tail sticking out between the rear slats. And there was a strong odor - very strong. "Load of djo. Smell healthy enough. Maybe things aren't as bad as anticipated."

"Don't get your hopes up too high. Presented with harsh reality, you might break cover by over-reacting."

"Good point."

Odirin fiddled with the instrument display mounted on the seat divider between them. "Didn't they say this thing had a receiver?"

"Nothing out this far to hear - not among the hills. Truckers might be talking to each other, but we don't have that kind of receiver."

Odirin's random fiddling brought in a burst of static, and then a voice rolling out a question that was answered by another voice.

"Correction," said Yran. "We do. Turn it up Box - uh, Ayyl."

Ayyl, right. The ansha name Yran had given Odirin for this mission. He found a volume control and then the tuner, and worked until he produced clear voices. It didn't help. "That's not Oaurdin they're speaking."

"Yes it is. Just listen." Tense, Yran leaned over to listen as the drivers exchanged cadenced comments for all the world like space barge handlers plying an insystem trade.

Odirin supposed that anyone using a com-channel fraught with static would develop a manner of speaking that could be understood even when only half-heard. He caught a word here and there that he might have recognized, but made no sense of any of it.

Yran, however, listened raptly.

Odirin watched the Kethsem, nervous that he wasn't paying enough attention to guiding the unautomated vehicle. But even with most of his attention on the voices that passed them in the night, the Kethsem never even came close to making a mistake. Of course, he could see a lot better than Odirin could.

Finally, traffic thinned when they passed a turnoff, and the voices died away. "So, what's the story?"

"What story?"

"The situation." He jerked a thumb at the radio.

Yran reached over and captured his hand, pushing it back into his lap. "That's a rude gesture and I'm your sotain, remember. You don't use a gesture like that around me."

Then he chattered on as if no offense had occurred while Odirin digested the idea that a sotain, a relative by blood, marriage or whatever, would be insulted by such a gesture. Of course, Lii was inured to galactic mannerisms so gestures were never an issue in his house. Lii sometimes referred daringly to Odirin as sotain. And the ral never understood Odirin's flush of mixed pride, embarrassment, pleasure, shame, and wistful sadness. Odirin had never figured it out, either, except that Lii gave him more than he could reciprocate.

Yran concluded his monologue with, "So there's fuel, but maybe not all the way to the city. The invaders have indeed garrisoned the capital, and the port, and they've destroyed the Offworld Enclave as predicted."

"In the city, we can just fade into the population."

"They send gunships over the city and blast random targets - hotels, even family seats - into rubble. Oddly, the countryside is relatively unscathed while a lot of the capital's streets are impassable. Most of the talk was about which streets are closed which bridges out. They kill and take prisoners and torture - but nothing they do makes sense. The consensus is they're insane."

"They're probably after three objectives at this stage - to cut the planet off from the Union, to break the back of any resistance, and to take over the local reins of power."

"Ha. Good luck to them."

"I don't understand."

"They've cut the planet off - no problem. Wasn't much communication to begin with anyway, and it all went through the Enclave. There are a vast number of people who are delighted about that. There is no resistance to break. And as far as power is concerned - well, they could take over the power plants and cut off electricity. People in the cities would be upset, but people around here wouldn't notice."

"I meant political power."

"I was getting to that. There isn't any they could recognize nevermind wield."

"That may be why they're torturing people - to find out where the secret reins of power are because the place doesn't fall apart when they blast the family seats."

"They must be very frustrated. Hope it doesn't make them kill everyone. That, they could do. Easily. Only the Union can stop them."

"Yeah. Do you think we can slip into the city, then?"

"There are several entry points where everyone has to stop to be searched. Union Intelligence thought they might be issuing identification to those authorized to pass in and out of the city. They've just begun to do that."

"Our only problem then is the box monitors. Everything else we've got is authentic or close replica."

"Oh, there's your internal physiology. The color of your blood. Brain waves. Little things like that."

"Getting out will be harder - if we stir anything up fetching the boxes. Then everyone will be closely inspected at all the exits."

"No point worrying about that now." Yran pointed at something out in the dark on the other side of the road. "There it is, right where I remember." Moments later, he pulled off the road and jounced into a rutted lane between the trees. Unpaved. Then they came out into a graveled clearing.

Lanterns strung on a wire a dim glow. There were several long bodied caravans up on blocks and rusted into place around the clearing, and signs in cryptic symbols pointed this way and that into the surrounding bushes. "Stay here. Scoot down and pretend to be asleep."

"I wanted to try out my persona."

"Not here. I want to see what's happening before I throw you into it. Nobody will recognize me out of Boxmaster's uniform - I've a very common phenotype and The Boxmaster is not a Tonrei. All I have to do is watch my dialect. With you, I'll have to watch everything. So sleep while I practice."

Odirin scooted down and let his sarone fluff over his face. Through the haze the head-growth made of his already dimmed vision, he watched Yran tromp noisily up to the door of one of the caravans and tap on it with a rock making a jaunty pattern of clicks.

He waited, scuffing his boots around an area rimmed in river stones, then knocked again. He was poking around a trash heap when someone opened the door - a child by the stature. Someone larger behind the child gestured, and Yran disappeared inside. The door closed behind him. Odirin covertly surveyed his surroundings, acutely self-conscious. Ida's right. Boxmasters aren't spies.

He'd bummed around the whole galaxy alone, thrust his nose into many places where it didn't belong, pulled some daredevil stunts that made Guild history, and never thought anything of it. Now, all of a sudden, he felt insecure.

The people out there in the campground weren't dangerous. He'd have no qualm, under ordinary circumstances, of going out and introducing himself, proudly, as human. There might be an occasional rejection, but so what? Under ordinary circumstances. But what if Yran was wrong. What if there were some collaborators?

On any other captured planet, he'd know the next move. Contact the underground and they'd help them retrieve their boxes and get out again. But if Yran was right, there was no underground for the same reason there were no collaborators. Both were the products of a war-oriented mentality - a choose-sides, and be-on-the-side-of-the-winner mentality. Kethsem disputes didn't have sides and they didn't give a damn about winning.

So if he were identified in this campground, what if word got around, and later the Sxome captured someone who'd heard gossip about a human boxmaster come to collect a box. Yran was right. Better not to chance revealing his identity to any native because they had to assume that what any native knew, the invaders would quickly learn.

The objective was to be in and out of here before anyone knew they'd been here. I just hope he's right that nobody would recognize him.

Finally, the caravan door opened and Yran came out with two adults - scal or ansha, not ral. Yran was carrying a piece of paper, and talking animatedly with the two, gesturing with the paper. And by every gesture, every word, every intonation, the neral was not the Yran he'd known for years. He was a total stranger who looked a little like Yran.

Odirin didn't move, didn't so much as let his sarone stir. Finally, Yran tromped around to his own door and slid under the wheel. He started the rover, and rolled down a path between two large trees, leaning forward over the wheel and squinting into the dark - which was a lot darker in the thick of the forest they were entering.

There were tents pitched here and there, some caravans, a few rovers like theirs - and of all things, a circle of wagons rigged to be drawn by harnessed beasts. The beasts, druchdrun, were sleeping nearby. Odirin had seen druchdrun drawn carts in the city, but they'd become rare recently.

Yran stopped and backed up, peering out his window to see beyond a line filled with clothing flapping in the slight breeze. "That's it." He turned the rover into a tight alley between a caravan and another rover. Beyond, they squeezed between some bushes.

They came out under great huge trees with trunks like pillars designed to hold up the sky. The ground beneath these trees was completely free of growth. There were tables scattered about, and fire pits lined with river stones.

The rover's lights swept over several tables before Yran picked one by consulting the paper he held against the steering wheel. He positioned the rover carefully, then turned off the engine. "Here we are."

Odirin looked about, but all he could see was darkness. "Can I get out now?"

"Ayyl may. Leave Odirin behind."

Before Yran opened the door, Odirin stopped him with one hand on his wrist. "What did I do wrong?"

"It's not a situation where an ansha asks a neral's permission. It's where an ansha gives a neral an order - such as stay here until I make sure it's safe."

"Oh. Fine. You make camp; I'll take a look around."

Yran handed him the paper. "You'll need the map. The facilities should be up that rise over there. I'm going over to take a shower before I go to sleep. I'd suggest you use the facilities in the rover and stay away from the other campers until dawn. We'll leave as soon as there's enough sunlight. It'll be clear in the morning but very cold."

They had discussed the problem of the odor of human excrement. Odirin had tablets to control it, but until they got to civilized plumbing he'd use the field crapper.

They spread the tent out from the side of the rover, with bedrolls and amenities in place. Odirin fell asleep before Yran returned, reflecting that turnabout was fair play. During his apprenticeship, Yran had been in Odirin's charge in a camp not so different from this. At that time, Odirin wouldn't have dared fall asleep without knowing where Yran was. Now, Yran would go out of his mind if Odirin wasn't here when he got back.

Odirin's disguise got its first test with the dawn light.

End Chapter Three