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Boxmaster's Disgrace
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Yran is progressing well in his Journeyman's training as a Boxmaster.
Odirin assigns Yran to go down into the mine where they'd been trapped in a collapse barely a year ago. With the pirates long vanquished, and life looking up, Yran fetches both their boxes from the mine. Odirin's box is the same one which Yran had compromised during his apprentice training. He had usurped control of the box from Odirin. But now Odirin trusts him not to do that again.
Odirin finds Yran collapsed over his shard and helps him deal with the problem.
Boxmasters are able to handle only 10 boxes at a time. Odirin prevented Yran from taking on an 11th box. When one is lost, it can not be replaced, so Odirin now has 9 boxes and Yran 10.
The Boxmaster's Guild has strict rules against one Boxmaster taking over control of a Box from another, and there are good reasons for those rules.
But Yran is the first Kethsem to become a Boxmaster. He's already proven to be the exception to most rules. He is convinced he should have taken on 11 Boxes.
Odirin's next assignment, with Yran along as his Journeyman assistant, is to monitor the maiden voyage of a new Battle Fleet flagship, Hytril.
On the new Flagship, Yran discovers the Pirates they vanquished a year ago had been only underlings of some organization that was vast and sinister and is now using another criminal organization to continue their campaign of destruction. But he can't prove it. They port the data over to their ship to study later.
While the Flagship is on maneuvers, Odirin and Yran go to service their Boxes on Crissden -- a scientific listening post monitoring the galaxy for intelligible signals.
Pirates attack the outpost and kidnap Yran, mistaking his suited figure for Odirin.
While Odirin searches for Yran, Pirates are trying to force Yran to use the Box which they have stolen along with him to help them further their schemes. But it is not his box. It is Odirin's, and by Guild law he must not use it. He undergoes torture, attempts to escape, fails, endures and tries again to escape. But he never even considers touching Odirin's Box.
Meanwhile, Odirin has Yran's box and knows from that only that Yran's still alive. He also knows the means to find Yran is locked inside Yran's Box. Odirin is sent back to Hytril to complete that surveillance job and told to let experts conduct the search for Yran. And he is to collect Yran's Boxes as if Yran were dead.
In his search for clues to where Yran might be, Odirin visit's Yran's home planet trying to get some help in the search, and discovers much about Yran's personal background he'd never suspected. Odirin visits the family that Yran chose to raise the newborn infant he rescued and re-discovers how important Yran is to them. He gains some martial arts training there that helps.
And finally Odirin succumbs to his personal need to rescue Yran. He makes the forbidden contact with Yran's shard -- essentially forfeiting his career and condemning himself to life imprisonment for the sake of making good on a debt of honor he owes to Yran.
Armed with information about the ship that kidnapped Yran from the listening outpost, Odirin tracks the ship.
Meanwhile, Yran's captors are about to hand him over to a higher-up pirate. At the end of his strength, Yran tries once more to escape while the ship is in dock.
Yran succeeds but takes a route that would have gotten him killed -- if Odirin hadn't turned up just then to rescue him from his escape plans.
Yran's opinion is irrelevant, though he maintains Odirin did not actually usurp his Box by legal definition. Yran believes he's uncovered more of the conspiracy against Odirin.
Odirin is sent to the Guild's high security planet where he must stay, isolated from the outside world for the rest of his life.
Yran and his new Boxmaster trainer take Odirin's ship to collect Odirin's boxes and emplace their own on his route. Yran convinces his new trainer that the conspirators who tried to kill Odirin are now after him and enlists her aid in trying to clear Odirin of charges of wrong-doing. It appears that Yran's 4th Box that Odirin had accessed bears an imprint that makes it originally Odirin's.
Between them, they amass creditable evidence of a conspiracy that's rooted deep in the Guild and other high places. Taking their evidence to trustworthy authority, they force the opposition to move. Yran spots several ranking individuals who have been replaced by androids including the head of Guild Security.
Meanwhile, Odirin is striving to make a new life in prison. He's allowed to monitor all the news and uses what computer access he has to dig into Yran's conspiracy theory.
Yran is now on record as believing the conspiracy originates outside the Union of Stars -- an invasion. Odirin believes it too especially after he finds the official records of his trial have been altered.
The pirates attack Odirin's ship with Yran and his new trainer aboard while they are nearing Hytril, the new flagship of the Union's fleet. It becomes apparent that Yran was right and the Union of Stars is being attacked from without. But it's also clear he's not going to be able to re-tune his 4th Box.
Odirin's sentence is ameliorated by Yran's discoveries, and he is given better access to information. He discovers and proves that he and Yran share a physical resonance, an identical way of handing their Boxes that was unique to them as a pair. He writes this discovery up as an academic paper.
Yran goes to the Guild's secure planet, in another facility from where Odirin is prisoner. He is there to delivery Odirin's boxes and surrender his own 4th Box. Before that, though, the Guild scientists runs tests on him, and they discover that he is primed to take on another Box.
The researchers arrange for Odirin to help. The theory paper he wrote has impressed them and made Yran's predicament more understandable.
The Guild decides to let Yran attempt to take on his 11th Box under Odirin's direction.
The experiment is a success and Yran takes his 11th Box while Odirin is allowed to keep the one which had been Yran's 4th. So now with conspiracies uprooted and confidence in honorable government restored, they each have a full complement of 10 Boxes and are fully exonerated under the law and Guild rules.
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