“It is not an honorable proposal,” X says.
“Zarra are so peculiar,” the Boss says, “and yet so predictable. It’s clearly documented that the first of your people are crosses, genetically modified humanoids, who changed yourself to tolerate the toxins in the air and water of your planet. It’s a terrible place. Absolutely toxic personalities, heh. Yet you haven’t been there a few hundred years before you decide that you evolved on that terrible world, and you had been there forever, and all other sorts of nonsense.”
“You will die screaming—” Z bellows.
“You will work for me,” he says. “Let the Sentry take you back to your quarters and let you relax while I take care of this manager. Or attack, and damn your people.”
X holds me up, her iron-hard arms around my midsection and keeping me from slumping, as my vision is still spotty from the beating. She has hardly moved.
And then, in one movement, she drops me and tosses a knife.
The NecroSentry is fast, but not fast enough. The knife glances off the Boss’s head, leaving a uniquely bloody eye and bloody slash down the rest of his boring face. He stumbles back. “Wha—”
“Better that every Zarra die than you violate any of our people’s honor.” X steps over me. The NecroSentry swings a massive fist at her midsection, sends her flying against the wall. To do it, though, the Sentry relaxes his grip on Z, who tears off one of the massive fingers and wriggles out.
Boss comes up bleeding, and even through my blurry vision, there is a half second where Z almost gets him. Z is damn fast, and springs up, over the chair, his hand out, his claws extended—
The Boss jabs a shock stick into Z’s chest. Wave after wave of the shocks pulse through Z and he screams. He shakes and screams. He reaches for the Boss, his arm shaking, drool spinning out of his mouth, the floor and the nice couch wet with his urine. He still reaches. With one hand he reaches, and one other shaking hand grabs the shock stick, tries to crush it.
Any other sentient would give up and die.
Instead, Z breaks the shock stick. It snaps with a screaming whine and a loud roar of pain from Z.
The NecroSentry picks up Z and slams him to the ground next to me.
Through a new haze of pain, I hear the Boss say, “Put them back into the ring. With the meanest thing we have.”
-16-
Jaqi
SCURV STANDS UP. Vi walks to the right, picks up one gun, and lets out a shudder, a shake through vir entire body. Goes to the other gun, does the same thing. “We are together, again. My lovelies.” Scurv tucks them guns into a couple of skin pockets that expand, like holsters. Them tubes shrink away, but I reckon they’ll pop out again when vi needs them. “We are feeling good about this prison break. Who have we the pleasure of working with, in this Reckoning?”
“Jaqi,” I say.
“Kalia and Toq, of Formoz, or the Keil Hallits.”
“Formoz’s brood?” Scurv half smiles. “We remember your pater when he was but a cub.”
“Oh, that’s nice that you knew Dad,” Kalia says.
“Stole a shipload of nukes right from under his nose, we did.”
Kalia don’t seem nearly as delighted about that. “Come on. Jaqi, where are we going now?”
“Araskar didn’t disable none of the main mag-locks between cell blocks and the upstairs. Our best chance of getting out is through the mines.” Here it comes. I don’t see no way around it. “We got to try talking sense into Swez and them Matakas.”
“Not them!” Kalia says. “They killed Taltus!”
“I don’t like it,” I say, “but they’re our best chance of getting this fella off this rock. Well, them, and the comic book star here.” I elbow Scurv.
Vi frowns, a frown worthy of a Zarra. “Them comic books lie.”
There’s a secret entrance to the mines on this level—2666 en’t no cell, but don’t no one but the guards know it, and me now. I stand there and enter the code, and it opens up, showing a ladder mounted on one of the fleshy ribs, them struts that support the exoskeleton of this big bug.
Up above us, the mines, a labyrinth of cut tissue and the hyperdense oxygen cells. Endless tunnels and chambers of tissue and gleaming cells. Somewhere in there, a loading bay where we can steal barges to get back to Trace.
“You want us to take the lead?” Scurv asks.
“I reckon I got enough swords to deal with trouble,” I say, motioning to both my blades. “Watch our backs, though.”
“The gravity’s weird,” Toq says, as we go up.
He’s right. The ladder twists and turns, but no matter which way we go, gravity is pushing us against the ladder, so after a minute we all stand up, and walk on the ladder.
“I feel weird, Jaqi,” Toq says.
“Too close to the grav generator,” Scurv says. “Gets into the bones.”
The ladder straightens out into a sort of path, laid with mag-track for some cart that’ll come through and pick up the hyperdense cells. Lots of them been mined and set here for pickup. Little, round, shining things, ranging in size from the width of my fist to the size of Toq. Marbles, set into the miles of lung tissue up here. “Keep them hands off your blasters there, Scurv Silvershot,” I say. “Stray shot’ll blow this place right up.”
“We don’t miss,” Scurv says.
“That’s what them comics say too. Thought them comic books lied.”
“Not about that.”
Mining equipment is everywhere here, from simple cutters—just sharp edges, no shards involved—to whole presses. The equipment lies abandoned. Reckon the prisoners have revolted with the guards sick. And up here, the slime from the poor sick blobs is everywhere. There’s a guard platform overlooking this track, dripping with the blue slime. A blob has left bits of itself on the railing for the cart.
We pass one of the blobs, and I motion the kids to hide while Scurv and I scope it out—but the poor thing has just nestled into a cove, a small hollow that a hyperdense cell was cut out of. Thank all gods and goshes this one en’t a threat. It’s basically poured itself into the cove to try and maintain its shape, and is blubbering softly, sounding a bit like a human snoring with a bad set of sinuses. Its blue, faintly glowing form stands out against the pink pocket of lung tissue.
Reminds me too much of that fellow I killed.
“Will they die?” Scurv asks.
“They en’t supposed to,” I say. “Matakas promised it would just make them sick for a while.”
“If they do, though, we still have what we want.” Scurv shrugs.
I don’t like that at all. I already killed one poor guard weren’t causing anyone trouble—what if I done caused the deaths of all of them? How’s that make me different than John Starfire?
“The pathogen will pass, we think. If it is what we think it is, then if it were strong enough to fully discorporate fluid sentients, we would all be having vicious hallucinations. In that, your Matakas stuck to their word.”
“Matakas. I reckon I ought to talk to them.”
“We have dealt with all the nests,” Scurv says. “We would not have chosen Mataka to work with.”
I switch on the comm. “Swez.”
“Female? Female cross?” He sounds genuinely surprised on the comm. “You talk with me, now?”
“Don’t you do that. You shot Taltus. Shot one of our own party.”
“I had nothing to do with that. The drone who shot the Thuzerian has been dispensed with.”
Should I believe it? En’t like they care much for each other. And it en’t like Kurguls need less encouragement to get trigger-happy in a fight. Entirely possible he’s telling the truth.
I en’t got much of a choice, do I? If I take his word for it, then we have a ride outta here. Otherwise we go out the airlock. I keep talking as we follow the mag-track, hear another sick guard gurgling down the hall. “I didn’t have nothing to do with the ship, Swez. That was just bad timing. Look, we’ll steal us a few barges, steal one of them big load
ers . . .”
“Already done. Barge-man bribed. He’ll take us home, for his cut.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Okay, well, maybe this en’t going quite as far out the airlock as I thought. “Excellent, scab. We’ll meet you there.
“About that,” Swez says. I hear quite a few vestigial wings rattling in carapaces in the background.
“What now, scab?”
“Not that we haven’t enjoyed our time with you, female, but we are about ten seconds away from the node.”
“What?”
“We have a barge-loader full of hyperdense oxygen cells. We have achieved our objective.”
I can’t even figure on the words to say.
“Some drones thought we should keep you, to sell back to the Resistance. One said it was bad business, but we all agreed that you will be in the Resistance’s pocket eventually, and so we weren’t offending a potential repeat client. I thought you had potential. Argued to give you a chance. The nest queen agrees. She told us to leave a couple of barges on the platform for you, and that other cross. You should thank me.”
“You damned, dirty Kurgul bastards!”
“Come on now, female, surely you can come up with something more original than that.” There is a noise in the background, and Swez says, “Salutes, female cross. We are at the node now.”
I yell every filthy word I learned in any humanoid or cricket language, but there is a roar and then static as the shortwave comm is cut off. The only way to get ahold of Swez now would be the pure-space relay.
And I don’t know his number.
The kids have heard me. “Jaqi?”
I lift the helmet off, exposing my nose to the stink of the mines. “We need to find a new ride.”
* * *
Araskar
The NecroSentry stands at the edge of the pit. Wearing my soulswords, the bastard. He flashes us a big, stump-toothed smile, and mouths the word death. We’re stuck in a few painted plasticene “rocks,” on sand made from silica bits, the fighting pit all set up to resemble a nice ghastly desert. Very little cover.
“Araskar,” X says. “The NecroSentry holds your blades. Can he hear Jaqi?”
“No,” I say. “The soulsword’s attuned to my psyche. For him it’s just a sword. Doing him about as much good now as it does me.”
“Did Jaqi tell you anything of use?”
“That she was in trouble too.”
“I see.”
X has recovered enough to help me stand, and seems little the worse for wear for the NecroSentry’s blow. Z, though, is still lying puddled in a heap on the ground, twitching from the effect of the shock stick. He could be like that for the rest of his life. He could recover enough to walk, but continue pissing himself. It’s no life for a warrior like him.
“Zarag-a-Trrrro-Rr-Zxz, do you hear me?” She bends over him and whispers a few words into his ear.
“If we get him to a good neuro-reconstructionist in the next day we can save him from a lifetime like this.”
“Do not underestimate Zarag - a - Trrrro - Rr - Zxz, Araskar Cross. He will recover.”
I don’t say anything. It’s a nice thought, but no humanoid will recover from a shock stick used like that.
The NecroSentry signals something. The loudspeakers are roaring, but here in the pit, it doesn’t come through clearly. “Zarra have . . . Manager, a hero of the war . . . to fare against the Maata!”
I know I’ve said this a lot lately, but: oh, shit.
The gate opens, and the Maata emerges.
“That is our threat?” X asks. “This is not even on par with the Slinkers.”
It’s a horned cat, nearly as tall in the shoulders as the NecroSentry. Liquid red eyes glisten in sleek features, and it lets out a low thrumming that fills the arena.
X actually laughs. “This is no task designed to finish off two honorable Zarra.”
“No,” I start to say, “you don’t understand—” But she’s off. She clambers to the top of a nearby rock.
The Maata ignores her, slowly winding between the fake rocks, eyes focused on Z and I.
“Z,” I say, and take his twitching arm. “Come on buddy, let’s get you—” Where? There will be maintenance tunnels under this pit. And they’ll lead down to the oxygen works, where we can actually sabotage this place.
“You’re just delaying yourself now,” Rashiya’s ghost says. “Come over to me. You know you want to be with me.”
I ignore her. Z grumbles something through his tongue.
X leaps from rock to rock, quietly, after the Maata.
It sure would be nice to tell her why that’s not going to work. Not that the Zarra listen.
I manage to drag Z, which is like dragging a spaceship, and also leaving a clear trail for the Maata.
Come on, come on, maintenance tunnel. My guess would be that it’s under a rock, that one of these rocks has some kind of lock system that, once undone, allows it to swing out of the way.
No, wait—
I can feel it. It must be all these years of using a soulsword. There’s a psychic resonator—under a rock nearby. The rock’s big, but I can shift it. I shove the rock as hard as I can, and I see a control panel almost hidden by the fake silica dirt.
A psychic resonator, but keyed to only a few people. Specifically keyed to the blobs, letting them into the maintenance tunnel below the pit via their psychic signature. Still, psychic resonators are strongest when keyed to only one person. The multiple guards and maintenance workers will have thrown this one off. If I had my soulsword, I might even be able to hack it.
I definitely don’t have my soulsword.
A growl interrupts my thoughts.
The Maata is close enough to smell now, a musky, thick scent that’s a bit like old, stinking mud. Its horns are gleaming, possibly rubbed with a slow-acting poison.
Its eyes focus on us and it lets out a soft purr.
X bellows, “For honor!” and cracks the sense-whip she used as a rope back on the moon of Trace.
She leaps onto its back, and it rears up, and she lashes the whip around its neck and pulls, to garrot the thing.
The Maata doesn’t choke. Doesn’t make a noise. It rolls sideways, and X has to leap backward to keep from being smeared on a rock—and her makeshift noose goes right through the creature’s skin, out its neck, leaving X holding a looped rope.
The cat, apparently unhurt, growls at her.
“It does not bleed?” X says.
“That’s not actually a cat!” I yell. “Maatas are blobs. Fluids, same as the guards!” Story goes that ages ago, a terraforming crew was horrified to find out they’d wiped out the native fluid organism. Then a rather fierce and versatile predator showed up, and they discovered the fluids had survived the terraforming—and evolved to fit into the new ecosystem.
“It is a fluid?”
“A fluid that really likes to look like a big scary cat!”
It chooses that moment to rear up. Its forepaws lose their shape, extend like the blobs’ tendrils, and become arms, long, clawed arms. It runs forward on its back legs, hissing still like a cat.
“This is an honorable challenge after all!” she yells as she runs.
“Oh, that’s good news!”
“Get up, Zarag—aghh!”
The Maata has connected. X rolls away. She disappears behind rocks, but the Maata has now re-formed to run faster, and I hear her bellows as it gives her more blood to go with her honor.
I bring my fist down onto the control panel and am rewarded with a feeling like a spike into the base of my brain. Everything goes black and when I blink I’m facedown in the silica.
The psychic resonator has a serious backlash.
“Araskar.” Z manages to hold his head up. He lifts a shaking arm, one painstaking inch at a time. “Take this. There is—ahhhh—still a charge.”
He’s got the broken-off end of the shock stick in his hand.
I don’t ask questions; I just grab it. These thi
ngs work by heating up a miniature shard that creates an electrical current through the nervous system of the the poor recipient; if the shard is still heated it might overload this thing.
If I can stand the pain from the psychic resonator.
I jam the end of the shock stick down into the control panel. Feels like hot mercury poured through my spinal cord.
I twist the stick, my teeth gritted against the pain, my whole body seizing up.
Rashiya dances before my eyes, her green eyes and red hair bright against the haze of darkness from the pain. “Are you ready to die yet?” I can feel her hand in mine. Dry, callused from swordfighting. “You have to be ready by now! Come on! There’s no more music left! There’s nothing left! You must be ready to die!”
“Araskar!”
Z pulls me away and I look down to see the control panel sparking. With a shaky hand, Z manages to wedge his claws under the panel and tear it out.
The sound I wanted comes up through the new opening—the roar of the oxygen works underneath the fighting pits.
“X!” I try to stand, and stumble.
X is dodging the Maata, currently a half biped again, running on short, bowed legs, with long arms reaching for her. It lowers its head to charge at her, and she actually dashes forward, and just rolls under its charge, between its legs, springs to her feet and runs away, toward us.
I try to help Z into the tunnel, and he shoves me away. “You go first,” he says, spit hanging on the edge of his lip. “It is the coward’s way, and you have no honor.”
“Nice to see you’re feeling better.”
-17-
Jaqi
“WE NEED ANOTHER RIDE?” Kalia says. “Another ride?”
“The Matakas took off.”
Toq wrinkles up his little head, too confused to be shocked. “They already went home?”
I would evil like to fall over and curl up into a ball. And maybe weep for a week.
Problem is, all three of my crew, even the legendary sheriff of the wild worlds, are looking at me for an answer.
“He said they left a couple of barges for us.”
“Not much thrust on those barges. It will take a few days to cover the distance the barge-loader covers in minutes. Unless we can commandeer another loader ship,” Scurv says.
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