by Timothy Zahn
The Wisp was going to take her to the duct and drop her in.
And kill her.
seven
No! The word screamed in her mind. No! Stop!
In her mind, but nowhere else. With her lips and voice frozen as completely as the rest of her body, she was utterly helpless.
She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t fight her way free. She couldn’t even warn Kahkitah that they were under attack. The big stupid Ghorf would just watch, figuring that this was how it was supposed to be, right up to the moment when the Wisps dropped them.
Unless they hadn’t bothered to grab him. He was somewhere behind her now, out of her limited range of vision. Were they just going to leave him here while they disposed of their main problem? Certainly there was no reason to kill him, and he was still useful to them.
So probably he would just get to watch, still not understanding, as the Wisp threw her to her death.
Wisp, stop! she shouted mentally at the creature clutching her to itself. Stop! I’m the Fyrantha’s Protector. You have to listen to me. You have to obey me.
There is no Protector, the Wisp’s voice came in her head. There is no Fyrantha.
What the hell are you talking about? Nicole demanded. This is the Fyrantha. This ship—the thing you’re standing in—is the Fyrantha.
There is no Fyrantha. This ship is the Vengeance.
Nicole felt her heart sink. There was only one reason she could think of why the Wisp would refuse to obey her: the Shipmasters had already turned Q1 completely to their control.
And for them to have already renamed it the Vengeance meant Ushkai had been right about their plans. They were hell-bent on turning the one-time harmless flying zoo back into a warship.
Nicole was the Fyrantha’s Protector. It was her job to stop that from happening.
Only she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything.
Wisp, she called again. Hopelessly. Uselessly.
And then, with a suddenness that made her gasp through abruptly unfrozen lips the Wisp’s arms opened and she was free again. She turned, opening her mouth to snarl at the creature—
To find Kahkitah standing behind the Wisp, his big hands gripping the creature’s thin arms at the elbows, holding them open. “Kahkitah?” she breathed.
“Are you all right?” the Ghorf asked anxiously.
“Yeah, now,” Nicole said, her muscles starting to tremble from reaction as she saw they’d made it to the midline corridor. She’d been that close to dying. “Not so much a minute ago. The damn thing attacked me.”
“Yes, I thought so,” Kahkitah said, still holding the Wisp’s arms. “What do we do?”
There was movement in the cross-corridor behind Kahkitah: five more Wisps had appeared and were coming toward them. A quick glance to the sides showed another five approaching from both directions along the midline corridor. “We run,” she said flatly. “Back to where we came across. I told the Wisps to wait for us—let’s hope to hell they did.”
“And we must bypass these first?” Kahkitah asked.
With an effort Nicole resisted the urge to swear at him. Of course they needed to bypass these Wisps. Hadn’t he been paying attention?
Only getting by them wasn’t going to be easy. Already all three sets of Wisps had opened their arms wide, moving away from each other so that they mostly filled the whole corridor. She and Kahkitah would have to duck under their arms, or push them aside without getting grabbed, if they were going to get out without being trapped.
Two problems. She didn’t know how well Ghorfs could duck, and she didn’t know how fast Wisps could move.
But there was nothing to do but try. “Come on,” she said. Turning toward the front of the ship, toward where they’d come across from Q2, she headed warily toward the Wisps.
And as she opened up to a slow jog, something touched her back.
She twitched violently away, her heart leaping. But it was only the outer arm of the Wisp that Kahkitah was still holding, brushing against her shoulder as he clumped his way past her and into the lead.
Apparently, she hadn’t known how fast Ghorfs could move, either.
“I will lead,” he called back to her, in case his burst of speed hadn’t been enough of a clue. “Stay behind me.”
“Okay,” Nicole said, frowning. She’d always known Kahkitah was fond of her, but this sudden bravery seemed out of his usual character.
But then, he didn’t know the full depth of what was at stake here. All he knew was that a few Wisps had gone rogue, and that Nicole needed to be rescued.
Though how he was going to pull this off she couldn’t imagine. Kahkitah was charging full tilt at the Wisps now, still holding his captive, moving fast enough that Nicole was having a hard time keeping up. There wasn’t any room between the Wisps—was he planning to let them capture him so as to let her escape?
Not as stupid or dangerous as it sounded, since they didn’t need to kill him. But he didn’t know that.
Of course, now that she thought about it, Nicole didn’t know that, either. Not really. The Shipmasters didn’t have any reason to kill him, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. She’d known plenty of guys who did stupid things in the heat of the moment when they weren’t thinking straight. If Kahkitah helped Nicole slip through their fingers, they just might be mad enough to do something nasty.
Should she try to stop him? Or at least warn him? But there wasn’t time for a full explanation, certainly not for someone as slow minded as Kahkitah.
She swore under her breath, her mind spinning as she tried to think. She was the Protector, and she had to survive. But did that mean she should let Kahkitah sacrifice himself if that wasn’t necessary?
She glared at the Wisps blocking the corridor. No. Jeff had nearly died because of one of Nicole’s crazy stunts. He might still die. She couldn’t lose Kahkitah, too.
Besides, letting other people take the bullet for you was what people like Trake and Bungie did. She’d always hated that in them, and she wouldn’t hate it any less in herself.
Clenching her teeth, she put on a burst of speed. If she could overtake Kahkitah and somehow get past the Wisps on her own, surely the Shipmasters would understand that he hadn’t done anything worth punishing him for.
But Kahkitah was still picking up speed, and with a sinking feeling she saw that there was no way she was going to catch him in time. He was almost to the line of Wisps—
Letting go of one of his captive Wisp’s arms, he reached down and grabbed its leg, swiveling the creature up into a horizontal position in front of him. He shoved his right arm straight out, slamming the Wisp’s legs into the Wisp in front of him, knocking the blocker out of the line and sending it staggering away, then turned and likewise slammed the arms and torso of his captive into the one on that side, likewise throwing it off to the side.
And suddenly the solid line of Wisps had a big fat opening in it.
“Come!” Kahkitah called, swinging his captive Wisp back the other direction as one of the remaining Wisps tried to angle toward him. This time he let go, hurling his captive against the other Wisp and sending both of them toppling to the floor. A second later he was through the line and heading down the corridor at a dead run.
Nicole was right behind him.
“What do I do?” Kahkitah asked. His brief moment of initiative was over, and he was back to the confused Ghorf again. “Nicole? What do I do?”
“Just keep going,” Nicole said, looking back over her shoulder. The Wisps that Kahkitah had bowled over were back on their feet, and they and the rest of the group were giving chase.
But unless they had a burst of speed in reserve that they were holding back for some reason, there was no way they were going to catch their targets. Nicole and Kahkitah already had too much of a lead, and they were adding more to it with each step. “Back to where we came in,” she added, turning to face forward again. What they had to watch out for now was the Shipmasters sending more Wisps against the
m from other parts of the ship.
But no new attack came. Either Fievj had been caught off guard by their escape, or he was content to just chase them away. At least for now. They arrived at their entry point to find the three Wisps who’d carried them across from Q2 waiting, just as Nicole had ordered.
“Great,” Nicole said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Wait,” Kahkitah asked, slowing down and holding out an arm sideways to keep her from running past him. “How do we know they’re not like the others?”
“It’s okay,” Nicole assured him. “These are the same ones we left here when we came across.”
“How do you know?”
Nicole shrugged. The Wisps all looked pretty much alike, and she still didn’t know how she was able to tell one from another. All she knew was that she could. “I just do. Come on.”
The Wisps waited while she and Kahkitah slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. “Take us back across,” Nicole ordered, turning and backing into the first one’s arms. The Wisp wrapped her in the familiar hug, the other two Wisps did likewise with Kahkitah, and the group turned to the access hatch that was even now opening into the heat-transfer duct.
A minute later, they were safely back in Q2.
* * *
It took Nicole a couple of minutes, sitting on the floor with her back to the Q2 arena door, to recover her breath and her composure.
It took Kahkitah considerably longer.
“Oh, my heavens,” he muttered over and over. “Oh, my heavens. Oh, my heavens.”
“Calm down,” Nicole soothed, watching him closely. The Ghorf looked like he was high on some crazy street drug: sitting down beside Nicole for a few seconds, then bounding to his feet and pacing, then sitting down again, then fidgeting, then hopping up again. The whole time his hands were shaking, and once or twice during his rounds of pacing it looked like his legs were going to collapse beneath him. Whatever Ghorfs used for adrenaline, it delivered one hell of a punch.
Unless it wasn’t adrenaline at all. Maybe Ghorfs just weren’t equipped for quick action, even when their lives might be at stake. Nicole had heard that elephants and rhinos were so big that they didn’t have any real enemies. Maybe Ghorfs were like that—so big and strong they never had to worry about getting attacked by anything.
Which put the whole Ghorf species pretty much off the table as far as the Shipmasters’ war-slave plans went. Lucky Ghorfs.
Though Kahkitah would probably never realize that. Distantly, Nicole wondered if being strong and invulnerable made up for being stupid.
Back in Philadelphia, with danger pressing against her from every side, she would have made that choice in a heartbeat. Not to mention that being stupid would have spared her from recognizing a lot of the nasty comments people like Bungie liked to throw at her. But now, knowing what was hanging over her whole world, it was brains that were going to count.
And she’d better start using hers.
“Look, try to relax, okay?” she told Kahkitah, trying hard not to sound irritated. This guilt thing was eating up time they might not have. “We’ve got to figure out our next move.”
“You don’t understand,” he warbled plaintively. He was back to pacing, and looking more agitated than ever. “This isn’t how we do things. We don’t move quickly. We don’t decide quickly. We don’t harm other beings.” He stopped abruptly and leveled a finger at her. “It was you. You, Nicole Hammond. What have you done to me?”
Nicole felt her eyes go wide. “Me? What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”
“It wasn’t until you arrived that I felt such … confusion,” Kahkitah said, clearly struggling to organize his thoughts. “It must be you. Your influence—” He broke off, his trilling changing briefly to an untranslatable pulsing sound. “Your inhaler,” he said, pointing toward her pocket. “You’ve used it several times while close to me. Could that have affected me?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said, frowning. The inhaler was slow death, but until it killed her it was her window into the Fyrantha’s computer mind. She didn’t have a clue how Ghorf bodies worked, except that they could eat the same food humans could.
Was it possible that stray dust from the inhaler could have slowly brought up Kahkitah’s IQ? “I suppose anything’s possible,” she said.
“Yes,” Kahkitah whistled a murmur. “Though that would be strange.”
“You have no idea,” Nicole said, wincing. “But whatever happened, it happened just when I needed it. How come you knew I was being attacked, anyway?”
“You hadn’t given the Wisp any orders,” Kahkitah said absently, still clearly trying to work this through. “Always before you would give an order, or you would walk up to it and back into its arms. This time you did neither.”
“Well, if it is the inhaler doing this, I’m damn glad,” Nicole said. “I think it was going to throw me into the heat duct.”
Kahkitah gave her a puzzled look. “You mean take you across? Get you out of that area?”
“No, I mean exactly what I said,” Nicole said. “It was going to kill me.”
Kahkitah gave a violent twitch. “But that’s unheard of,” he protested. “No Wisp has ever attacked anyone. Never.”
“No Wisp has ever been fully under the Shipmasters’ control, either,” Nicole countered.
Though now, with the fear and panic fading, she had to privately admit that she didn’t know that murder had been on the Wisp’s mind. The Wisp hadn’t said that. Fievj hadn’t threatened that. Maybe Kahkitah was right. Maybe they were just trying to evict her.
She took a deep breath. No. Proof or not, however it was she could tell one Wisp from another, she knew the plan had been for her to die today.
“So Jeff and the others are lost,” Kahkitah murmured sadly.
Nicole snapped her attention back to him. “What? Who says?”
“If we cannot go to them, they are lost.”
“Who says we can’t go?”
Kahkitah gave her a confused look. “But if the Shipmasters seek to kill you, we must stay away.”
“A lot of people have wanted to do a lot of stuff to me,” Nicole said, shivering at some of the memories. Most of the time she’d been able to avoid the nastier demands, either by playing one guy against another or just by being somewhere else at the critical time. The few times she hadn’t been able to get clear … “The trick is not letting them.” She hesitated. Clearly, he wasn’t up to this. “But I can do it alone,” she added. “There’s no reason you have to come.”
Kahkitah drew himself up to his full height. “I won’t abandon you, Nicole,” he said, his wavering and confusion disappearing. “I’ll stand by you, and by Jeff and the others. But you must tell me what to do.”
“I’ll try,” Nicole said. A whole quarter of a ship’s worth of Wisps—not to mention the Shipmasters themselves—was a hell of a big order for two of them to tackle. But better two of them than just one of her. “Okay. I’m guessing the trick is to spend as little time as we can in the corridors where the Wisps have free run. We know the Q1 arena is set back from this one”—she rapped her knuckles against the door she was leaning against—“so we’re going to head back along the corridor on this side until we get to a spot directly beside it. Then we’ll get the Wisps to carry us across.”
“Yes, I see,” Kahkitah said slowly. “And you know where it is?”
“I think so,” Nicole said. “I crossed from the Q3 arena over to Q4, and if it’s the same distance up here, I should be able to find the access panel that’s right beside the door.”
“The same distance…?”
“Between the Q1 and Q2 arenas as between the Q3 and Q4 ones,” Nicole said patiently. “No, wait.” She frowned as a thought suddenly struck her. “Maybe we can even do better. Never mind coming in outside the door—there was an access door inside the Q4 arena that led up to the top of the ship. If we can find one into Q1, maybe we can be inside before the Shipmasters even know w
e’re there.” Best of all, she wouldn’t have to use her inhaler to get a door code.
She wrinkled her nose with disgust at herself. And if she’d thought of that earlier, she could have gotten into the Q3 and Q2 arenas without having to use her inhaler there, either.
The inhaler dust might make Kahkitah smarter, but it sure wasn’t doing anything for her own brains.
“Then we should depart at once,” Kahkitah said, again stretching to his full height. “Or as soon as you’re ready.”
“I’m ready,” Nicole said, pushing herself back to her feet. Like she’d been the one they’d been waiting on while he worked through his panic attack. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Now that Nicole knew what to look for, the access panels into the heat-transfer ducts were fairly easy to find. Likewise, knowing how far she’d had to walk from the Q3 arena to their hive, plus the distance from there to the Q4 arena, was easy enough to work out. She and Kahkitah walked that distance; and, sure enough, there was the access.
The other entrance, though, the one that would hopefully lead into the arena itself, wasn’t nearly so obvious.
“Are you sure it’s here?” Kahkitah asked about the fifth time he and Nicole walked back and forth through the same area without finding anything.
“No, not really,” she admitted. “The door I used was on the other side of the Q4 arena, the side farthest away from the midline. I just assumed there’d be one on this side, too.” She shook her head. “Damn. Okay. Back to the main door, I guess.”
“I have a thought,” Kahkitah said hesitantly. “What would happen if we stood here and you told the Wisps to carry us across? Would they take us back to the other door, or use a closer one if it was available?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said, frowning sideways at him. He was definitely starting to get into this thinking thing.
That, or as the inhaler dust slowly killed her it was also making her stupid. Jeff hadn’t mentioned that part. Maybe he didn’t know.
Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to make the bad news even worse.
