Knight

by Timothy Zahn

  * * *

  As usual, the Wisps—at least those in Q4—were prompt and efficient. A few minutes later, Nicole and Kahkitah were back in the hive.

  Now that Nicole wasn’t fighting so hard against her fatigue, it had surged in like one of the waves in the Q1 arena, threatening to knock her out with every step. Luckily, Kahkitah was there, and with his help she made it to the dining room without actually falling over.

  Just the same, she ended up dozing with her head on the table for the ten minutes it took him to get the food preparation up and running.

  She ate two trays’ worth, rather surprised she was that hungry, then let Kahkitah escort her to her old room. She left strict instructions for him to wake her in two hours, took off her boots, and climbed into bed. She barely got the light off before falling asleep.

  Six hours later, she woke up.

  For a minute she just lay there, propped up on one elbow, blinking at the clock as her still-fogged brain tried to figure out what was going on. She’d told Kahkitah to wake her in two hours—how could she possibly have slept for six?

  Because Kahkitah had ignored her instructions, of course.

  Damn him.

  Snarling, she hit the light switch, shoved off the blankets, and started to get out of bed—

  And jerked back as she realized suddenly that she wasn’t alone. Kahkitah was in her room, lying on the floor across the doorway with one arm folded under his head as a pillow. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and steady.

  Nicole took a full double lungful of air. “Kahkitah!” she barked.

  She’d expected him to jump to his feet, or at least jerk violently. But he merely opened his eyes and blinked once at her. “Ah, you’re awake,” he said calmly. “Do you feel rested?”

  “I feel damn angry,” Nicole snarled. “I told you to wake me in two hours.”

  “I tried,” he said. Stretching, he got leisurely to his feet. “I was unable to bring you to consciousness.”

  “Really,” she said icily. “How hard did you try?”

  “You needed sleep,” he said. “More than two hours would have provided you.”

  “Wonderful,” Nicole bit out. “Great for me. Pretty damn rotten for Jeff and the others. Now we’re six hours behind on collecting all the stuff we need for the drug—”

  “It’s all collected.”

  “—and if Fievj and his buddies—” Nicole broke off as Kahkitah’s words suddenly penetrated the haze. “What did you say?”

  “The materials are all collected,” he said, his voice calm. “I did it while you slept.”

  Nicole opened her mouth. Closed it again. “We were supposed to do that together.”

  “You needed sleep,” Kahkitah said again. “I didn’t.”

  Nicole took a deep breath, feeling like a complete fool. “Why didn’t you—? Never mind. You’re sure you got everything?”

  “Yes,” Kahkitah said. “But returning to the arena may be difficult. Do you have any ideas how we’ll do that?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Nicole took another couple of breaths, trying to force her brain to function. Still an uphill battle.

  On the other hand, as long as that particular task was now done …

  “I’m going to take a quick shower,” she said, climbing the rest of the way out of bed. “Go make sure everything’s packed as tightly together as you can make it.”

  “I will.” Kahkitah pointed to Nicole’s jumpsuit. “May I suggest you also change into clothing that isn’t marked with yellow paint?”

  “Oh. Right,” Nicole said. With everything else that had happened, she’d completely forgotten about the Ejbof paintball gun. “I’ll get one of my others. Oh, and if there’s room inside whatever bag you pack the drug supplies into, toss in a few meal bars and water bottles.”

  “We aren’t going directly back to the arena?”

  “We’re going back,” Nicole said. “But the route I’m thinking of might take a little extra time.”

  “I understand,” Kahkitah said, touching the door release. “I’ll await you in the dining room.”

  “Okay. And Kahkitah?”

  “Yes?”

  Nicole swallowed hard. “Thanks.”

  * * *

  Nicole hadn’t spent much time in the Q1 section. But she had spent a lot of time in Q4, and while the arenas themselves weren’t lined up exactly the same way between the four sections, many of the areas above and below them seemed to be laid out alike.

  The last time she and Kahkitah had gone into Q1 Nicole had tried to get as close to the arena as possible before crossing the heat-transfer duct from Q2. That hadn’t gone very well. On the other hand, the Shipmasters only had so many Wisps they could use to block her path. If they were focusing their attention and their Wisps in the area around the arena—and if Nicole was in charge that was certainly where she would put them—maybe a more roundabout approach would work better.

  So this time when they left the hive she headed straight sideways to the heat-transfer duct and ordered the Wisps to take them to the very top of the ship.

  They came out of the duct in the same general area Nicole had been to once before, back when the Fyrantha had been under attack and she’d been summoned to fix a problem with a broken defense console. The corridors here weren’t laid out as straight or as conveniently as those below, but she’d been to the area a couple of times since then and mostly knew her way around. Midway through her zigzag path they passed another familiar spot: the staircase leading up to the observation room where that particular console cluster had been located.

  She glanced at the stair as they passed, feeling a twinge of remembered emotion. This was where she’d first seen proof that the Fyrantha was, in fact, a huge ship traveling through space …

  “What’s up there?” Kahkitah asked.

  Nicole hesitated, freshly aware of the time pressure squeezing in on her. But Kahkitah had been aboard the Fyrantha longer than she had, and had probably never seen the stars from anywhere on the ship. For that matter, maybe he also had doubts about where they were. “I’ll show you,” she said, doubling back to the stairs and leading the way up.

  The last time she’d been here the Fyrantha had been sitting in the middle of a million bright stars. This time, to her surprise, the stars weren’t there. All she could see was the hazy blue of the ship’s outer hull, now wrapped in complete blackness. “What the hell?” she muttered. “Where’d all the stars go?”

  “We’re in hyperspace,” Kahkitah murmured. “There are no stars there.”

  Nicole blinked at him in surprise. “What are you talking about? Where’d they go?”

  “They’re still there,” Kahkitah said. “We just can’t see them. Look there.” He pointed in front of them. “You see that dot?”

  Nicole craned her neck. Almost lost in the blue haze was a bright blue-white dot. “Is that a star?” she asked.

  “That’s all the stars,” Kahkitah said. “Or rather, all the stars whose light can reach us. The ones behind us are there.” He pointed behind them, where a dim red spot was shining. “Those on the sides can’t be seen.”

  An eerie sensation tingled at the back of Nicole’s neck. “How do you know all that?” she asked carefully.

  “I don’t, personally,” Kahkitah said. “But some Ghorfs have thought a great deal about such things. Some have written those thoughts down. Others have read those words. I have spoken to some of them.”

  “Oh,” Nicole said, feeling both relieved and a little disappointed. “I thought … never mind.”

  “That perhaps we were not as slow as you thought?” Kahkitah said gently. “I’m sorry if I disappointed you.”

  “Not your fault,” Nicole assured him. Actually, the thought of a Ghorf Einstein would probably have been more disturbing than helpful anyway. “But you can see now how big the Fyrantha really is.”

  “I already knew,” Kahkitah said.

  Nicole frowned. “You did?”

&nbs
p; “We’ve spent a great deal of time walking through it,” he reminded her.

  “Oh. Right.” Nicole took one final look out through the windows, trying not to think about the sheer size of the task that Ushkai and the Fyrantha had dropped into her lap. To protect this whole thing from the Shipmasters …

  “Nicole?” Kahkitah asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure.” She took a deep breath. “Break time over. Let’s get out of here.”

  thirteen

  The transition from Q4 to Q2 was easy. Nicole kept going forward until she got to what she hoped was the right place, then changed direction toward the middle and the centerline heat-transfer duct. Three Q2 Wisps came at her call, and carried them across to Q1.

  There were no Q1 Wisps waiting when they arrived. That part of the plan, at least, had worked.

  Now came the tricky part.

  “Where are we going?” Kahkitah asked as Nicole led them through the zigzag corridors toward the center of the section.

  “This used to be a zoo, remember?” Nicole said. “Before that it was a battleship or something. Either way, they had to be able to get big machines or supply containers to the arena.”

  “Or big animals?”

  “Or big animals,” Nicole said. “So I’m thinking they may have some kind of elevators or at least bigger corridors leading down there.”

  Kahkitah seemed to ponder that. “But we’ve seen the arenas,” he said slowly as their path zigged again. “I haven’t seen any openings in the ceiling or walls. Maybe the supply elevators come up from underneath.”

  “Some of them might,” Nicole conceded. “But I figure there have to be ways to get stuff in from both directions. Maybe the ones from above open through a section of wall instead of the roof.”

  “That could be,” Kahkitah agreed. “Nicole?”

  “Yes, Kahkitah?”

  “You don’t mind all these questions, do you? I know I’m sometimes slow.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said. “What do you need to know?”

  “I’m confused,” he said. “The creature we spoke to—you called him Ushkai?”

  “The Caretaker, yes.”

  “He said this drug will work on humans like you and Jeff,” Kahkitah said. “How does he know?”

  “He told me the Fyrantha’s original owners set things up so that only humans can fix it when something goes wrong,” Nicole said. “Don’t ask me why. Anyway, I figure that means they’ve been snatching people from Earth for a long time, so they’d know how our bodies work.”

  “But what would that kind of drug be used for?”

  “No idea,” she admitted. “Something medical, I suppose. Doesn’t sound like the Fyrantha’s big on recreational drugs. I mean, they don’t even have beer.”

  On the other hand, Sam had been able to get their hive’s food processor to create whiskey once. If Setting Sun or some other drugs had once been used for recreation, maybe some earlier group of slaves had figured out how to make it.

  “Something medical would make sense,” Kahkitah murmured. “A sleeping potion, perhaps?”

  “Maybe,” Nicole said. “Though they work us hard enough that most people probably don’t have trouble sleeping. I sure don’t.”

  “Setting Sun,” Kahkitah repeated softly, an odd new tone to his voice. “Perhaps it means the final setting of the sun?”

  “What do you mean? Like when the ship finally gets to wherever it’s going?”

  “Or the setting sun for each individual,” Kahkitah said. “Perhaps the drug’s purpose is to ease the pain or fear of passage from this life.”

  “Oh,” Nicole said, wincing. That one hadn’t even occurred to her.

  But it made sense. A lot of people had lived and died on this ship, and she’d seen enough death to know it could be scary and painful. Something to help them through it might have been good to have around.

  Too bad there weren’t any more supplies of the stuff. If she kept using the inhaler the way she had in the past couple of days, she might be needing some herself soon.

  “I still don’t see any larger passageways, though,” Kahkitah continued.

  “Or elevators, either,” Nicole said, looking around as she worked her mind away from thoughts about her own death. If her calculations were right, they should be over the Q1 arena. Whatever the original owners had used to move big stuff in and out, they should be seeing it by now. “Maybe all the places they would have gotten their supplies from are farther down. You see any regular staircases?”

  “I think we just passed one.”

  “Let’s try it,” Nicole said. “If we don’t find something else, we might have to try coming up from under the arena like you said.”

  She’d estimated they would need to go down twenty-five to thirty levels to reach the arena. Every few levels she took a quick look outside the staircase at the surrounding corridors, looking for the supply levels that had to be somewhere. But wherever they were, they weren’t in this part of the ship.

  On the other hand, there’d been no sign of Wisps, either. The situation wasn’t great, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  They were still a couple of levels above the arena floor when the staircase unexpectedly ended.

  “Where now?” Kahkitah asked as Nicole moved cautiously back out into the corridor.

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking around. As near as she could tell, they were no more than a corridor or two away from the observation balcony where the Shipmasters could look down into the arena. If any of them or their pet Wisps were wandering around, the last thing she and Kahkitah wanted to do was sit here holding a long conversation.

  “The floor is thicker here,” Kahkitah said. “What does that mean?”

  “What do you mean, it’s thicker?”

  “It’s thicker.” He tapped his foot on the deck, as if that move told Nicole anything. “I can feel the difference. It’s much thicker. What does that mean?”

  “No idea,” Nicole said, frowning as she tried to visualize the ship. She hadn’t been in this exact part back in Q4, and anyway things in Q1 might be completely different.

  Ushkai had said the arenas used to be hangars for space fighters. So there would have been fighters down there, and maybe crew quarters and repair shops.

  And missiles and fuel and explosives?

  She looked at the floor. Assuming Kahkitah was right about the deck being thicker, maybe that was to protect the rest of the ship from an explosion. Was that why the stairway they’d just been in had ended? Because this deck and others like it were isolating the arena area from everything else?

  “That slab of floor ahead,” Kahkitah said, pointing. “It looks different.”

  Nicole frowned. He was right. At first glance, the section had the same soft red flooring as every other corridor aboard ship. But everywhere else the flooring was unbroken, as if it had been poured onto the floor like syrup and let dry. Here, she could see definite breaks, about three meters apart, in the red.

  As if that part of the floor maybe opened up?

  “There are more,” Kahkitah said. “Up ahead.”

  “Got it,” Nicole said. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see at least two more broken sections of floor. “I’m thinking maybe they open up.”

  “And lead downward?” Kahkitah started forward. “Let’s find out.”

  “There has to be a control somewhere,” Nicole said, eyeing the walls as they arrived at the nearest section. As far as she could tell, the walls were the same smooth metal they were everywhere else.

  “Maybe they’re only for emergencies,” Kahkitah suggested. “In that case, the control might be in a central location elsewhere.”

  “Like in the observation balcony,” Nicole said, scowling. “So much for that idea.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Why, don’t you?” Nicole countered. “I’m pretty sure we’ve already used up all our luck with that balcony.”


  “I wasn’t suggesting we go back in there,” Kahkitah said. “But even if they’re normally controlled from elsewhere, surely there would be an additional control nearby in case the main system failed.”

  “Maybe,” Nicole said, studying the floor. Though if the local control was on the other side of the floor from where they were standing, they would still be out of luck.

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Kahkitah said, stooping down and poking around the edges of the flooring with his fingers.

  Just one thing? The unkind thought flicked through Nicole’s mind. “What’s that?” she asked instead.

  “You’re the Protector,” he said, still probing the flooring. “Can’t you just order the Fyrantha to do what you want?”

  “We’ve already been through this,” Nicole said. “I can ask the Wisps and the Caretaker to do things in Q4 and a little in Q2. Q1 is under Shipmaster control.”

  “But you said this was an emergency door,” Kahkitah said. “That should always have a control nearby.”

  Nicole sighed. “It’s probably on the other side of the floor,” she said. “Something people down there could use to get away from a fire or explosion or something. Or maybe there’s a code or word they had to use.”

  “The Fyrantha should certainly recognize the voice of its Protector,” Kahkitah said, his birdsongs sounding a little huffy. “Can’t you simply order it to open?”

  “What, like Simon Says or something?” Nicole scoffed. “‘Protector says open the floor’? That would be—”

  She jerked back as one edge of the section suddenly popped up from the rest of the floor. Even as Kahkitah scrambled to get out of the way it continued angling upward, and Nicole could see a similar section of floor beneath it angling the other way, unfolding and extending something as it swung downward. Their side of the floor continued turning, flipping up and over and finally flattening out on the section of corridor beside it.

  Nicole waited until she was sure everything had stopped moving. Then, she eased carefully to Kahkitah’s side and looked down.

  The section she’d seen extending downward had become a set of stairs. A set of stairs, moreover, that led right up to—