When Six saw just who it was he flung himself off his mount and at the two Sellites, Diva only half a step behind. Atheron cursed and backed back into the building, followed by Xenon 49. As the doors closed behind them they gave some instructions to their Xianthan allies, who closed with Six and Diva and began to fight in earnest.
WITHIN MOMENTS THERE was absolute chaos in the compound. Xianthan workers, piling out of their offices, were aghast to find compatriots fighting visitors on the entry steps. They pressed around, murmuring in consternation. Nobody paid any attention to Atheron and Xenon, who slipped deftly in amongst the crowd and made their way discreetly to the sled room. Once there, they set about disengaging the safety protocols on the nearest sled, climbing aboard, and exiting the compound unnoticed by the rest of its occupants.
Six, who had spotted the pair of them as they disappeared, was in no condition to follow. The Xianthans were very large and very well-trained, and both he and Diva had their hands full just to avoid being carved into small pieces. He was watching Diva out of the corner of his eye, too, but she was giving a good show, and he could tell that she wasn’t in any need of his help.
Diva was furious. They had been caught completely by surprise, and she wasn’t sure exactly what was going on here. Was this one of the renegade Xianthans her mother had told her about, or was the whole nation about to rise up against them? She couldn’t think what had happened, or why Grace had charged off to the south on her canth. She kept an eye on Six, in case he needed some help, but he seemed to be doing all right on his own, so she concentrated on her own Xianthan opponent.
At last Six managed to disarm the man in front of him, and stood there, his kris at the man’s throat, panting at the effort. The public clustered around, muttering, but one look from Six kept them from directly invading his space. He could no longer see Diva over all the heads, but he heard the fight draw to a finish, and was relieved when her voice sounded above the buzz of comments all around.
“Six? You all right?”
“Yeah. I think so. Don’t let your man get away!”
But the level of noise from the crowd grew even more in intensity, and they could no longer hear each other. Six kept his eyes, and his knife, on the neck of his assailant, and waited. There was nothing else he could do, much as he would have liked to swing himself onto his canth and take off after Grace. He felt sick with worry and guilt that he had not gone with her. Now what had she got herself into?
Then the crowd swirled, changing shape suddenly, and allowing the director of the facility through. “What has been happening here?” he demanded sharply, as he pushed to the centre of the disturbance.
When he finally came upon the scene he stopped short. His eyes slid over the man on the ground, and over Six’s blade, firmly held against the vulnerable throat. Ignoring Six, he knelt down beside the man and put his own fingers to the man’s temple, pushing the restraining knife out of the way.
“Explain yourself!”
The man screwed his eyes shut, and refused to speak. The deputy head looked around.
“Message taker,” he said, picking one of his fellow-workers out of the press around them with a lift of his head. “Go and find out what is missing.”
“Grace,” said Six grimly.
The director looked at him.
“Grace is missing. She is the Sellite girl who came to see you yesterday. And you might want to check on Atheron and Xenon, the other two Sellites. Last time I saw them they were making tracks back into the complex.”
“Do it!” The message taker hurried to obey.
“Why did these men attack you?” the Xianthan asked Six.
“To stop us from following. Our friend came running out of the building, hotly pursued by the two Sellites and two Xianthans,” he pointed to his own captive. “The other one is being held just over there by my friend …”
The Xianthan made a sign at the crowd, which immediately fell back, exposing an irate Diva who was showing her immaculate set of teeth, but in a snarl. Her captive was showing the whites of his eyes, and sweating profusely.
The director signed to Six to go on.
“… The Sellites left the Xianthans to stop us following them, and ran back inside the building. My friend threw herself onto her canth and disappeared at full gallop in a southerly direction.”
At that moment they were distracted by a flash off to the left. They looked around and spotted the sled Atheron had stolen as it shone in the sunlight. The sled shimmered for a moment, and they could see it was traveling at top speed in a southerly direction.
“… And they would appear to be chasing my friend,” finished Six. “So, if you don’t mind, I would like to be getting after them.”
“If this is true it is a great loss of colour for the Xianthan people,” the director told him. “Please wait. If this is confirmed we will take you on a sled to find your friend. You have no chance of overtaking a sled on a canth.”
Since that was obvious, Six nodded. He could think of no better course of action, though the slowness of these people was whipping his nerves into a frenzy. He glanced at Diva, and saw the same impotence in her face. Grace was in imminent danger, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it.
IT TOOK TWO hours for the director to consult with his functionaries, and to interrogate the Xianthan captives to his satisfaction. Once they had determined that only a few Xianthan renegades were involved in this, to them, heinous crime of treason, they began to move.
Six had demanded a tridiscreen during the wait, and had managed to contact Arcan, on Valhai. “I found out they have two shuttles at the spaceport near the Xianthes,” he told the orthogel entity. “Can you remove both theirs and ours, Arcan? If they get her up into space we will never get her back alive! And tell Cimma what has happened. Atheron and Xenon are bound to have caught up with Grace before we do – these Xianthans are far too slow!” Arcan had agreed instantly, and told him that he would bring Cimma over as soon as he could get her up to the Kwaidian orbital station. Even in such an emergency, he couldn’t violate the agreement with the Elders which prevented him from transporting directly into New Kwaide.
“It will be hard to trace the other sled,” they were now being told by the man who made speeches. “Magsleds leave no trail, and they cannot be detected by anything other than a direct observation.”
“Terrific! At least I hope you now believe my friend!”
The director nodded. “The only explanation would appear to be that your friend was telling us the truth. Xiantha will not undertake any further trade with the Sellites. We will make our own arrangements for voluntary donors, exactly as your friend suggested.”
“At least that is something!” Six admitted grudgingly. “But it isn’t going to help to get Grace back!”
“If the orthogel entity has removed the space shuttles, then there is no way that they can leave Xiantha. We will find them in the end.”
“Yeah! And what will you do to them?”
“They are foreign nationals. We can only deport them, and make them personae non gratae.”
“Very scary. I am sure they will be terrified to hear that!”
“Now then, Six. No need to be sarcastic!” Diva told him.
“Yes, but … honestly! These guys are about to murder Grace, and they are talking about giving them a slight slap on the back of the hand!” He made a disgusted sound. “This lot are going to be no use whatsoever. We are just going to have to find her ourselves.”
“I know. But first let’s see if she managed to escape from them, shall we?”
“Fat chance of that!”
The remaining sleds were at last drawn up and prepared, and several Xianthan volunteers were detailed to each. Six and Diva were invited to board one of them, and then the group took off into the brilliantly blue and sunny day.
GRACE HAD MANAGED to slither up the neck of her canth until she was in a reasonable riding position. It took all of her concentration just to hang on
to its neck with the cuffs on her hands, leaving her no time to worry about the direction the animal was taking. All she wanted to do was to get as far away from Atheron and Xenon as she could. Her breath was coming in gasps, and she realized that she was still shaking from the sheer unexpectedness of the attack, and the adrenaline her flight had liberated.
The canth sped on, seemingly effortlessly, across the country. But not quickly enough. She became sickeningly aware, out of the corner of her eye, that one of the magsleds was in pursuit. Her heart sank. There was no possibility whatsoever of outrunning them. Six and Diva had told her all about the sleds, and the speed that they could reach.
She looked around. They were traversing a dry desertified area, where there was no shade and no vegetation. If she were forced to leave her mount here it would die very quickly. She couldn’t do that. What were the chances that Six and Diva would find the animal? And even if they did, and she weren’t present, they wouldn’t be able to liberate it. Only she could do that.
A decision made, she pulled back on the mane in front of her, asking her canth to stop immediately. It obediently dug its front legs firmly into the sand, and the smooth ride deteriorated into a series of jerks and bumps. Grace tumbled not so gracefully off the smooth neck in front of her, landing without much damage on the silvery sand, just in front of the canth, which was tossing its head with wild eyes. The impact took the breath out of her, and she struggled, unable to say the release word.
The magsled had been going so fast that it had overshot their position, and was decelerating rapidly to turn and find her. She forced reluctant air into her lungs, little by little until she had enough saved up to manage the full word.
“Abrogate!” she breathed, reaching up to touch the velvety nose in a sign of thanks.
The canth dipped its head, and met her gaze for a second. Then, as it became aware of the approaching sled, its nostrils widened with fear, and the whites of its eyes showed even more clearly. Grace struggled again to draw in more breath.
“Abrogate!” she repeated, more urgently.
The animal looked back down at her, and she could have sworn that it nodded its noble head at her. Then it swiveled on its hind legs, twisted somehow in mid air, and was gone, galloping as fast as it could away from the scene, back to the canth farm where it would be cared for.
Grace smiled at it. At least one of them would be free! She turned to her brother and his mentor as they pulled to a silent stop nearby. Both were smiling their satisfaction at her detainment. She glared at them, and staggered to her feet, trying to put her chin up. Would they kill her now, out here? Or would they wait? She thought of Arcan …, of her mother …, of—
“So, Sister. Did you really think you would be able to escape us?”
“I can only do my best.” And she waited for the blow, meekly.
There was some muttered discussion between Atheron and his subordinate, from which Grace discerned that she was not to be executed immediately. Atheron was pointing out that they had probably mobilized half Xiantha by this time, and that it would be most imprudent to leave a body lying about even here in the desert. Somebody, he was saying, was bound to come across it.
“We will stick to our original plan,” he decided finally. “Then there will be no evidence of anything, and she will simply have … disappeared.”
Grace shivered.
Xenon inclined his head in agreement, and signed to Grace to get into the magsled. She lowered her eyes, and obeyed him. This was not the time to try anything. The sled rose again off the ground, turned towards the north, and began to fly back over the terrain.
“They are bound to be following us by now,” shouted Atheron, “so we will take a vector slightly west and then east, in case they are closer than we think. Get her out of sight.”
Grace felt her feet being bound together, and then she was bundled into a blanket and thrust down onto the floor of the sled. There she lay, invisible to any casual eyes, and hardly able to breathe through the thick material. She closed her own eyes and concentrated in keeping panic at bay. It was not an easy task.
SIX AND DIVA were both standing in a magsled, eyes raking the skyline, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of either Grace and her canth, or the missing magsled. They were hurtling across the Great Plain in a southerly direction, but the sensation of speed was missing, because of the smoothness of the ride. The Xianthans seemed fairly confident of finding the missing sled, and had sent out only two more, but neither Six nor Diva shared their conviction.
They were both furious, blaming themselves and each other for not taking better care of Grace, each worried more than they could say about what might be happening to her at that very moment.
“If she had been wearing an orthogel bracelet, this would never have happened,” said Diva.
Since it had been Six’s idea to refuse Arcan’s offer in that direction, Six took this comment personally. “I suppose you think it is all my fault, as usual, lady faultless?”
Diva shrugged. “If Valhai goes around Almagest …”
“And whose idea was it to let Grace go in alone this morning?” demanded Six in an aggrieved tone.
“You were the one who was harping on and on about being married!” retaliated Diva. “You are the one that can’t let things go!”
“I suppose you think that I was making a mountain out of an anthill?”
“Exactly! It’s no big deal, after all. Typical man, to exaggerate the whole thing! Now look what has happened!”
“Diva, I swear that if we get Grace back alive and well, I am going to teach you some manners!” Six’s teeth were gnashed together, so it was hard to understand him.
“You and whose army?” scoffed Diva.
Six made a silent prayer to the heavens above, and clutched his fingers tightly in his palms. Of all the girls, he thought. Why did I have to get this one? Then he looked more closely at the tight face in front of him and grinned to himself. He wouldn’t have changed her for all the rexelene on Kwaide, he thought. She was the single most valiant person he had ever known. And if she was proud and haughty and pretty unruly, then that was just part of her. From the moment she had flashed those brilliant white teeth in his direction and snapped out her first insult, he had been totally lost forever. And he knew it. It was now his job to make sure that she didn’t suspect it. He didn’t want to her to ride roughshod all over him. At least, not just yet. It would be prudent to keep her guessing a while longer.
“I could beat you in any fight with any weapon,” he taunted. “You are no match for me now, Diva, and you know it!”
The magnificent eyes flashed. “That is a lie!” she blazed. “Take it back!”
“Won’t!”
“Then I challenge you to a proper combat – wherever you like, and with whatever weapon you want. I will make you eat your words, no-name!”
“Good,” he answered absently, having spotted something on the horizon. “Look! Isn’t that Grace’s canth?”
Diva scrunched up her eyes. “It could be,” she hazarded. “But it looks riderless to me.”
The magsled veered slightly off its course to intercept the animal. Diva was right. The animal was heading on a direct course back to Eletheia and the canth farm, and there was no sign of a rider. It sheered away from the oncoming vehicle, but didn’t stop.
The Xianthans nodded. “It is returning home,” one of them said. “It has been released by its rider.”
Six and Diva looked at each other.
“Typical of Grace!” said Diva. “She must have given herself up rather than leave the canth to fend for itself!”
Six nodded. “That is just the sort of thing she would do! Trust her to put an animal before her own well-being!”
“Even so, the animal looks terrified. I hope it gets home safely.”
“But now we have no means to find Grace. She could be lying injured … or … worse … anywhere in the desert.”
Diva stiffened. “The only thing we can
do is assume that they wouldn’t want to eliminate her out here, where her body could be easily found—”
“I’d like to know what your definition of ‘easily’ is!”
Diva ignored this sally. “—so our best guess is that they would be taking her directly to the spaceport near the Xianthes. They won’t have any idea that Arcan has moved the shuttles. And – if we are very lucky – we can get there almost at the same time that they do!”
Six shook his head. “This is not going well,” he said. “I have a really bad feeling about all this.”
“We’ll get her back. Those two aren’t going to be able to put up much of a fight against the whole of Xiantha.”
Six gave a sigh. “Hope you are right,” he said. But he found himself shaking his head
Chapter 13
CIMMA WAS UP at the peak camp on Kwaide, trying to make peace between the ex donor apprentices. The Kwaidian sycophants who had been donor apprentices on Valhai were unhappy that their Coriolan counterparts had come to visit. It was supposed to be a goodwill visit, but was turning out to be an exercise in jealousy and national interest. Cimma was struggling to remind them that they had, until recently, all been in the same situation, and that what was needed now was cooperation to mutual benefit of both planets. It was an uphill task, and she was smoothing over some ruffled feathers when a runner from the base camp came panting up to her.
“If you please, you are wanted immediately at the base camp. Ledin asks you to be expeditious.”
Cimma made her way down as fast as she possibly could, to find a strained Ledin pacing up and down outside her cabin.
“We have to go to Xiantha,” he said, without preamble. “They have captured Grace.”
Cimma felt a tremor start inside her abdomen and spread its chill throughout the rest of her body. “Who?”
“Atheron and Xenon. Who else?” Ledin had a worried furrow which ran right from one side of his forehead to the other, making him look much older than he was. “I am going to find her. Will you come?”
Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 Page 74
