Tara k harper, p.1
Tara K Harper, page 1
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
Copyright © 1992 by Tara K. Harper
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy-
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 institute 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
"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 careless 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 holotank, 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
smoothed out again. With her on-the-job experience, she could use her biofields to set her navigation beams on perfect
trajectories, something the other students, working through
the cheap beamers the lab supplied, could not do. If she
could do this kind of focus with a cheap beamer, she won-
dered how it would be to work with a fine-tuned beamer on
a hyperlight ship?
She glanced toward the back of the class where two
strangers, recruiters from one of the Federation outposts,
were observing the students silently. She almost wished she
did not know why the two were at the lab. The opening they
were looking to fill was a research posting, one for an assis-
tant with skills similar to her own. But there were tests to
pass before one could qualify for the posting, and the first
test alone cost 120 credits. Other students could afford to
take this and every other test. . .
