Before Astlin could ask any of the questions raised by Teg’s comment, he moved to the end of the room and opened the only other door. Hushed voices on the other side rose to urgent chatter as he stepped through.
Astlin hurried after him and found herself in a chamber shaped like a tin can. Triple rows of recessed bunks lined the curving walls on her left and right. A narrow passage ran up the middle, floored with metal grates.
A long steel table flanked by parallel benches, all welded in place, stood at the room’s center. Four men and one woman sat around the table while four children ranging from toddlers to adolescents watched their elders’ heated debate.
Standing at the table’s foot, Teg took the brunt of his shipmates’ agitation.
“Everybody relax,” he said.
“Relax?” said a middle-aged man with wispy hair and a lined mouth that gave him a permanently downcast look. “You trade Yato for a man-eating stowaway and tell us to relax?”
“Fine,” said Teg. “Next time I won’t tell you anything.”
“Saba’d rather be right than alive,” said the lean, rosy-faced woman with her hair gathered in a knot. “He’s still vexed we made it past the first month.”
Saba rose and jabbed his finger at the woman. “You won’t be joking when a verdilak’s sucking on your neck, Marse.” Suddenly he jumped back from the table and yelled, “There’s one of them now!”
With a collective gasp, everyone else stared at Astlin. Their accusing glares struck her speechless.
Teg planted himself beside Astlin and laid his hand on her shoulder. “You only wish someone this pretty would suck on your neck, Saba.”
“Hi, I’m Astlin.” She gave Teg a sidelong glance. “My husband is upstairs.”
A small girl perched on the edge of a top bunk giggled. “Her hair is like the one-hand man’s!”
The comment stoked Astlin’s curiosity. Red hair was practically unknown beyond Keth, and even there it was rare enough to get her teased at school. Was this tiny ship harboring another Kethan?
Astlin turned to Teg, who’d gone strangely quiet. “Who’s she talking about?”
Teg headed toward the back of the room. Those seated on the right side of the table rose to let him by.
“He keeps to himself, mostly,” said Teg. “Come and say hello.”
Astlin made her way past a roomful of wondering eyes to the last column of bunks where Teg crouched. There, propped up against the back wall on a worn mattress, lay a figure that Astlin found eerily familiar yet marvelously strange.
“I think his hair is a shade lighter than yours,” Teg said of the scrawny man whose mane and beard were vivid red and whose right forearm ended just above the wrist.
“Who is he?” Astlin nearly jumped when the maimed man’s piercing green eyes fixed themselves on her.
His face reminds me of Damus, she realized. And his eyes are like Szodrin’s. Could he be a Gen?
“Meet Captain Jaren Peregrine,” said Teg. “He’s not the captain of this ship. Or any ship, since his last two exploded.”
Astlin peered into Jaren’s eyes. They shone with a fierce, though haunted, light.
“What did you see?” she wondered aloud.
“Jaren doesn’t talk much these days,” said Teg. “At least not in actual words. We picked him up on Crote. The last place I saw him before that…would take a while to explain.”
Driven by a force she couldn’t name, Astlin stooped down and reached toward Jaren.
“It’s alright,” she said. “I can talk directly to his mind.”
Jaren’s left hand darted out and grabbed Astlin’s wrist.
“Gleamed like gold,” he rasped. “The Fire.”
Astlin wrenched her hand free with a start. Jaren leaned back against the wall as if nothing had happened.
“That’s the most coherent thing he’s said since we found him,” marveled Teg.
Astlin barely heard him. Memories of terror, madness, and pain seared her soul.
The hall door swung open. Astlin stood to face the dour-looking young man who stepped into the room.
Marse spoke first. “What did you find, Ehen?”
Ehen’s long dark hair shook with his head. “I searched from bow to stern. Those of us in this room—and the new steersman on the Wheel—are the only ones aboard.”
“Excepting poor Yato,” said a wrinkled man with a long grey beard seated at the table, “we’ve come out none the worse for wear.”
Teg nodded. “Let’s keep it that way till we catch up with the Serapis.”
8
Only the faint light of the Middle Stratum’s farthest star betrayed the presence of the Sinamarg. A dim glint like tarnished silver outlined the Night Gen flagship’s sharp angles while its onyx planes remained immersed in the utter darkness beyond the last star’s sight.
The Sinamarg’s hull, looking from below like a great pentagonal gem, its two leading edges elongated to a dagger point, likewise overshadowed the fleet of lesser nexus-runners that hung below it—frozen raindrops under a storm cloud.
Yet to Celwen, the great ship was as close as her own body—and just as subject to her will. She suppressed her impatience with the orders constraining that will as the Sinamarg and its fleet waited at the edge of space; turned not toward the living spheres ripe for conquest, but the utter darkness that had hidden her people for an age. The fleet’s disposition struck her as frustratingly backward.
Damn Lykaon! A redundant curse. The demon prince’s hunger to regain his throne compelled him to serve as Shaiel’s Left Hand. Having already sacrificed his pride, he would not hesitate to offer up the Night Gen fleet for his ambitions.
Celwen stifled a bitter laugh. Lykaon knew better, but the Lawbringers he commanded thought her people the worst terror of the dark. Nothing else could explain the foolish summons they’d sent into it. Actually meeting what they’d summoned would teach the greycloaks otherwise.
As if answering her thought, the ship alerted Celwen to a disturbance just off the starboard bow. She turned her magnified vision in that direction and saw, not an object approaching through space, but a distortion in space itself.
Celwen watched enrapt as the empty blackness warped and bubbled like molten plastic. The frothing surface formed blisters that swelled and somehow took on substance. The extruded sacs clustered together in a doughy mass that resembled a cancerous jellyfish whose tumors held a metallic luster.
The fleet’s comm channels erupted in a telepathic cacophony. Celwen phased out the crosstalk with an effort and concentrated on the creature apparently birthed from the darkness itself.
Scans showed that the being or object—no means at her disposal could tell precisely which—dwarfed every vessel present but the Sinamarg, approaching twenty percent of the flagship’s mass. Its density, internal structure, and overall shape were in constant flux. No individual life signs could be distinguished with any consistency.
A shiver ran down Celwen’s spine. It’s them. The Anomians.
Every child of the Night Tribe knew the tales. There were places within the non-place of infinite darkness where no nexus-runner dared trespass. These utmost reaches of the Middle Stratum, where nature’s laws were better thought of as suggestions, were the haunt of the Anomians.
Which race they’d belonged to, none could say. But it was whispered that these ancient Factors had perverted transessence to escape the limitations of their nature. The most disturbing accounts held that they’d succeeded—and lost their souls.
The fleet stopped chattering with itself and started bombarding the weird visitor with transmissions in every available medium.
At length, communication attempts ceased. A silent moment passed.
Perhaps they will lose interest and leave, Celwen hoped.
A coiled tendril burst from the hideous clump of blisters and shot toward the fleet. Celwen raised the flagship’s defenses, but a consensus of her telepathic overseers belayed her impulse to open fire.
<
br /> The tendril darted under the Sinamarg and its powerful shields. A bulb on the pseudopod’s end released a cloud of smaller spore-like projectiles that showered a group of Aqrab-class ships. Most of the nexus-runners repelled the attack with flashes of blazing light.
One crew reacted too slowly. The living projectiles latched onto their ship’s trefoil hull like barnacles on a seagoing vessel’s keel. Webs of rot spread out from the impact sites, turning black crystal to running sores.
Celwen again sought permission to fire—this time on the tainted ship—and was again denied. Her resentment became panic when a pair of nexic waves revealed that something had translated from the infected nexus-runner to her own ship. Internal sensors could make no identification.
How is this possible!? Nexic translation rendered a living creature and its personal effects into pure prana that traveled along that being’s silver cord. One could translate through almost anything—except a nexus-runner’s shield.
The only explanation chilled Celwen’s blood. Unless whatever just came aboard is alive enough to translate but enough like inert matter to confuse the shield.
Celwen cringed. She could feel the invading presence spreading along the ship’s corridors like parasites burrowing through her veins.
Why isn’t anyone stopping it?
The question became moot when the invasion did stop—right outside the bridge doors.
Celwen’s awareness snapped back to the bridge. The suddenness of her emergence from the sympathetic interface left her briefly disoriented. She cast about the large room until her gaze fixed itself on her own reflection—tall and slender in her pilot’s jumpsuit, dark hair spilling to her waist; all shaded black in the polished obsidian floor.
I am myself. The corruption is not in me.
Yet the words were difficult to believe.
The shouting of a security team alerted Celwen to a commotion at a set of double doors in one of the room’s six matte grey metal walls. The three men, wearing dark blue jackets over black shirts; sweat slicking their black hair and beading on their ashen skin, stood ten paces from the door and argued over who should dare to move closer.
Hideous rasping and slapping emanated from the other side. Rather than sounding aggressive, whatever lurked beyond the door gave the impression of something cautiously probing for nearby danger, like a blind man feeling his way along a clifftop.
It breezed through sixteen security checkpoints to get this far, Celwen thought with growing fear. Why let a simple door keep it from taking control of the ship?
From her position near the room’s apex where the tapering left and right walls met the front view screen, Celwen turned to the command crew gathered near the wall opposite the shunned door.
Her worthy superior Captain Velix always saw possibilities in even the most difficult situations. Now Celwen saw only frustration in the tight set of his jaw. Even Admiral Raig, imposing in his wholly black uniform, hesitated to issue orders.
A differnt fear, much like standing on the edge of a precipice, washed over Celwen an instant before the doors behind Raig and his officers slid open. Her vague dread intensified to near-panic, like a dream of falling she couldn’t wake up from, when a grim band of soldiers loped onto the bridge, bowed beneath armor that rang like crossed blades with each step.
The squad processed to the center of the room. Though unfamiliar with the tools of Middle Stratum warfare, Celwen perceived their armor as not only arcane, but combining pieces from many different cultures. Yet eclectic taste was the newcomers’ least odd quality. In the shadows behind their slitted masks, Celwen caught flashes of yellow eyes and long teeth. Their speech was the snarling of muzzled dogs.
They were not Flesh Thieves—not Isnashi. These beasts had never been of Celwen’s kind. They hailed not from the darkness beyond all worlds, but from the pits beneath, and nothing could ease her revulsion at having to bear them on her ship.
A dread figure loomed over the pack, solitary despite his feral honor guard. His bronze helm, crowned with the jagged antlers of no natural beast, hid his face. A pelt too large for any normal wolf covered his broad shoulders. Perhaps the skin belonged to the monstrous lupine head carried aloft by the standard-bearer at his side.
The towering figure pointed at the door that held back the invading abomination. His voice was a guttural peal of thunder. “Open.”
The security team turned to him and stared wide-eyed. Even the horrible thudding at the door ceased.
“Prince Lykaon.” Admiral Raig ran his fingers through his white hair and cleared his throat. “This intruder poses an unquantified threat. It would be prudent to wait for additional security personnel before exposing ourselves to further risk.”
At the merest gesture of Lykaon’s hand, one of his honor guard marched toward the security team. He seized one of the hapless security officers, ignoring the rest as if their short swords were made of foam rubber.
“Again,” Lykaon said. “Open.”
Raig nodded to Celwen. Against her personal judgment, but in keeping with her duty, she released the command lock barring the intruder’s way.
The door opened on a riot of alloyed flesh, as if a colony of primitive sea creatures had fused with the wreck they fed on and grown to absurd size, filling the hall with shuddering, cilia-wreathed stalks.
His head wedged in the crook of the man-beast’s bulging arm, the security officer shrieked when his captor tossed him into the open maw of chaos.
Celwen screamed as the mass enveloped the struggling man with a chorus of sucking sounds. His own muffled screams continued for far too long after his body disappeared in a knot of tendrils and cysts.
“Easy, Lieutenant,” Velix said to Celwen. His steady voice brought her immediate calm.
Lykaon’s men laughed like jackals. He himself watched in silence.
“We pledged Shaiel our support in return for his,” shouted Raig. “If you bring my officers to harm, our alliance is at an end!”
A pseudopod burst forth from the mass bearing a bulbous growth larger than a man. The flesh-colored bulb turned brown and peeled back, releasing a stench like burning metal and spoiled milk along with a roughly manlike figure.
The creature from the bulb tottered forward, the pod that had birthed it shriveling to nothing as it advanced. A final sheath of veined plastic-like material sloughed off, revealing a crooked bipedal form draped in ribbed membranes that grew from its hunched shoulders.
Celwen watched in morbid fascination as furry scales like those on moths’ wings bloomed upon the membranes, making the whole look like varicolored robes. But the head perched atop the stubby neck belied all kinship with Gen, human, or any clean race.
Thick fibers like grey twine wound around a misshapen gourd served as the monstrosity’s face. Whorls opening at irregular intervals held what Celwen took to be eyes, while a variety of mouth parts resembling those of leeches, lampreys, and spiders nested inside others. She guessed that the few empty openings functioned as ears.
The abomination stood before Lykaon’s guards, multiple organs on its face blinking, sucking, and smacking.
“Name yourself and your purpose,” Lykaon said.
A tendril lanced in from the hall and coiled around Lykaon’s throat. His retainers shouted curses and howled as they hacked at the ropy outgrowth to no avail.
A sickly golden nimbus surrounded Lykaon. He grabbed the constricting tentacle with one hand, his gauntleted fingers sinking into its rubbery surface. Grey-brown fluid seeped from its metallic veins.
The tendril uncoiled and tried to withdraw, but the demon prince held it fast. Golden light poured from his hand into the tendril and coursed through it into the hall. The tendril and the mass attached to it melted down to a tarry residue that clung to every surface of the corridor as far as Celwen’s natural eyes could see.
An even more startling revelation came when she cast her own nexic sight over the ship.
He froze out the invasion. It is all g
one!
All, except for the many-eyed, many-mouthed aberration cringing before the prince.
“The outer darkness must dull the wits of all that dwell in it,” Lykaon said. “Shaiel’s Left Hand compels you. For the last time, name yourself.”
A confluence of gurgles, clicks, and chirps from the creature’s mouths produced syllables approximating words. “Liquid Sign.”
Lykaon grunted. “You sought to take this ship.”
“Wanting Song was to incorporate properties of Those That Do Not Exist and their ship,” said Liquid Sign. “All processes of Wanting Song now permanently inert.”
“Because it presumed to conquer what is mine by conquest.”
Raig charged forward, but was halted by the ring of snarling guards.
“Conquest?” he cried. “This was meant to be diplomacy; not piracy!”
At some covert signal, Lykaon’s guard parted. Raig drew back, but the demon prince strode past him toward the bridge officers, who stood dumbstruck in his path.
Celwen couldn’t blame them. Even from her position on the control dais she felt the mindless terror of a rabbit cornered by wolves.
Lykaon overshadowed the bridge officers like an iron pillar. Velix alone faced the demon unflinching.
With the time-distorting speed of sudden violence, Lykaon locked Velix in a chokehold. The square-faced captain’s grey skin darkened and his green eyes bulged as Lykaon squeezed. A sound like dry wood cracking broke another officer’s trance, because she screamed when Velix’s limp body slid from Lykaon’s arms to the deck.
“He cannot move, yet he still feels pain.” Lykaon didn’t bother to face Raig, but there was no mistaking who was being addressed. “He dies slowly. Hours or days. He stays here. Anyone raising hand or voice against me dies with him.”
Anger chased away Celwen’s fear. But prudence tempered her wrath. She wordlessly contacted the nearest translator station and ordered Velix evacuated to the infirmary. His broken body vanished in a green-white flash.
Silence swallowed the chaos that had gripped the bridge. Celwen expected Lykaon to bluster and rage; to issue ultimatums for the one who’d defied him.
The Secret Kings Page 8
