by Timothy Zahn
Nicole huffed out a breath. They’d done all that? “I guess I’m lucky to be alive.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Wesowee said. “Kahkitah knew exactly what he was doing. We’ve long explored all of the Fyrantha’s waterways.”
“What, all two of them?” Nicole scoffed. “Unless you want to count the streams in the Q4 arena.”
The two Ghorfs looked at each other. “The Fyrantha has precisely one hundred twenty-eight water passageways large enough for a Ghorf to travel through,” Wesowee said. “I would have assumed the ship’s Protector would know—”
“Wait a second,” Nicole cut him off. “A hundred and—you guys can swim?”
“We swim quite well,” the second Ghorf said, a bit stiffly. “Why don’t you know these things? Kahkitah said you were the Fyrantha’s Protector.”
The best defense is a good offense. “How many Protectors have you known?” Nicole shot back. “Hmm? How many? Just me, right? So get off my back and let me do this my way.”
“Of course, Protector,” the Ghorf said with that same stiffness.
Nicole looked at Wesowee, ready for more argument. But he remained silent. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s start from the top. Who’s this we who you say have explored the Fyrantha? You two, you two plus the ones over there, or someone else?”
But the moment had apparently passed. “I think that conversation should be handled by Kahkitah,” the second Ghorf said. “Our main reason for bringing you was the hope that the old hospice facilities might include a supply of the Setting Sun drug Kahkitah said you need. But so far our search has been unfruitful.”
Nicole looked over at the Ghorfs with the lights. Hospice. She’d heard that word before, connected to one of her grandmother’s friends. Something to do with dying, she vaguely remembered.
Was this where the old human workers had come to die, and then to be buried?
“Fine, I’ll ask Kahkitah about it,” she said. “How do I get back to the Q1 arena?”
“I’ll guide you,” Wesowee said. “Indeed, we may have lingered too long. Kahkitah wanted you back as soon as you awoke, and you slept longer than we anticipated.”
“He did warn us that you were overtired,” the other Ghorf added. “But I don’t think he expected you to sleep for twenty hours before you—”
“Twenty hours?” Nicole cut in. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? We have to get going, right now.”
“There is no rush,” the Ghorf said calmly.
“Like hell there isn’t,” Nicole snarled. Like he would have the slightest idea what was going on upstairs. “Come on, come on.”
“I’m ready,” Wesowee said with equal calmness.
“Then let’s go,” Nicole said, her empty stomach tightening even further. The Shipmasters could be kicking off Jeff’s war at any minute. Could already have started and finished it, in fact. If she’d missed it because Wesowee had let her sleep in …
“Follow me,” Wesowee said, and headed along the edge of the graveyard.
“We’ll let you know if we find any of the Setting Sun,” the other Ghorf called from behind them.
“Yeah, you do that,” Nicole called back, frowning at the cylinders. Hospice, death, and burial, she’d thought … but there wasn’t nearly enough room in those cylinders for a body. Had they been—what was the word?—cremated? “Wesowee, these aren’t the actual bodies, are they?”
“No, just the memorials,” Wesowee said. “The bodies, like everything else aboard, were reclaimed.”
“Reclaimed?”
“Returned to the Fyrantha’s resources,” Wesowee said. “Broken down into basic components—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Nicole interrupted, her gaze dropping to the grating they were walking on, and the dark mass beneath it. “So, like … compost?”
“Yes,” Wesowee said. If the idea bothered him, it didn’t show in his voice. “Come. Kahkitah and the others await you.”
sixteen
Nicole had hoped the route back into the arena wouldn’t follow the same path as the one Kahkitah had used to get them out in the first place. She really wasn’t looking forward to swimming back through the Q1 ocean.
Fortunately, there was no water involved. Wesowee took her along a maze of service passageways, barely big enough for him to squeeze through, with no swimming or dunking or even wading. Twenty minutes after leaving the basement, they emerged through a final door into an all-too familiar corridor.
“This will lead you into the arena inside the tree line,” Wesowee murmured in a subdued birdsong, pointing to the stairs going down.
Nicole nodded. And going up, those same stairs would lead into the Shipmasters’ observation balcony. Something a little less risky might have been nice.
Still, no ocean swimming was the important part. “Thanks,” she murmured back.
“Good luck,” he said, and disappeared back through the door into the service areas.
Keeping half an eye on the stairs above her, Nicole headed down.
The arena door was no longer blocked open the way she and Kahkitah had left it. But as she eased it open she spotted the cloth strip they’d used lying nearby in the sand. Perhaps the Shipmasters hadn’t spotted it, but had merely kicked it away accidentally during one of their trips into the arena. She stepped through the doorway, used the strip to again block the door open, and headed toward the hive.
Levi was standing guard at the entrance, holding a sort of spear with three points at the top instead of one. One of the trident things Duncan had told her about earlier, presumably. Wrapped around Levi’s waist was the folded-up net Duncan had also mentioned.
Levi spotted her, glanced around, then gestured her urgently toward him.
“About time,” he said as she reached him. “Where’ve you been? Never mind—not important. Jeff and Allyce are almost ready with the gun, but we’re about out of excuses and the Shipmasters are getting twitchy.”
“Jeff was able to stall them off this long?” Nicole asked, wondering what gun he was talking about. The only thing she’d left was the paintball gun. Had Kahkitah sneaked upstairs and gotten hold of a greenfire weapon?
“No, Jeff’s game is played out,” Levi said. “But Bennett bit the bullet and twisted his ankle to buy a little more time. Figured it would be another week before he was ready. But those pressure bandage things are damn good, and he’s almost back to speed.”
Nicole nodded. So the Ghorfs down in the cemetery had been right about there not being any hurry for her to get up here. “What’s the new timetable?”
“The Shipmasters have handed out the weapons to the Greenies—”
“Same ones as ours?”
“Yeah,” Levi said, frowning. “Why? Were you expecting Bungie to get something different?”
“They sometimes do that,” Nicole said. “So when is it?”
“They told us the battle will start at sunrise, about ten hours from now,” Levi said. “Jeff figures Bungie will try to jump the gun—the tide will already be on the way out by then—but he doesn’t think he can have the gun ready until a little before sunrise.”
“So if Bungie moves early we have a problem,” Nicole agreed grimly. “What exactly is this gun you’re talking about?”
“The one you left for us,” Levi said, frowning. “That was you who left the gun, right? Kahkitah said it was.”
“Sure,” Nicole said, her faint hope that Kahkitah might have snagged them a better weapon fading away. “Where are they?”
“Where you left the gun,” Levi said, nodding toward the path leading up into the hills. “Jeff thought it would be safer not to bring it out where the Shipmasters might see it.”
“He’s being careful in the hive, too, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah,” Levi assured her. “We just do drills with the tridents and nets in there. Never anything that’s secret.” He gave her a tight smile. “And we’re pretty freaking useless at the drills, too.”
“Goo
d,” Nicole said. “I’m heading up. Shout if you see Bungie coming.”
“Don’t worry, Jeff’s got a whole system set up,” Levi said. “You just get up there and see if you can make things go a little faster.”
Nicole found the little group just downstream from where she’d tossed the paintball gun up onto the riverbank. Jeff and Allyce were hunched over a set of medical containers, while Kahkitah sat at the edge of the river with a collection of paintball balls on the ground beside him.
Kahkitah spotted her first. “Nicole!” he called excitedly, his voice barely audible over the roar of the river. “Are you healed? Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” she called back as she worked her way through the trees to them. “More than fine. You shouldn’t have let me sleep that long.”
“You probably needed it,” Jeff said, waving her over. “He said you were exhausted.”
“No more than any of the rest of you,” Nicole said. “So … Allyce. You’re here?”
“I’m here,” Allyce said. Her expression wasn’t exactly unfriendly, but it wasn’t friendly, either. “Jeff asked me to come and treat Bennett’s ankle.”
“She’s been terrific,” Jeff added. “She mixed up the drug, and has been helping me load it into the paintballs.”
“Great,” Nicole said, keeping her eyes on Allyce’s. “So you’re on board?”
Allyce’s eyes dropped away from Nicole’s gaze. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” the other woman said. “Let’s leave it at that.”
Nicole pursed her lips. Not exactly an answer. Still, for now it was probably good enough. “Okay. What’s the plan?”
“Allyce figured out that the drug can be either administered orally or inhaled,” Jeff said. “Since we probably can’t talk Bungie and his team into drinking the stuff, we figured we need to get them to breathe it.”
“I already said I could get it into their food,” Nicole reminded him.
“And I wasn’t ready for you to take that risk,” Jeff said, his forehead creasing in a frown. “I’d assumed you left the paintball gun because you’d come up with something better.”
For a split second Nicole thought about lying. Sure, of course, that was the plan all along.
Trake would probably have lied. Bungie certainly would have lied. Pretending she knew what she was doing was the best way to keep them listening to her and doing what she told them to. The best way to keep them believing in her as the ship’s Protector.
But she wasn’t Trake or Bungie. And she sure as hell wasn’t much of a Protector.
“I hadn’t really thought that far ahead,” she said. “I mostly brought it to fend off the Wisps if I had to.”
“Really.” Jeff’s lip twitched. “You know, that one hadn’t even occurred to me. Sometimes great minds think together; sometimes they run in parallel.”
“Okay.” Nicole wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but at least he wasn’t mad at her. “How can I help?”
Jeff nodded toward the paintball gun, hanging by its strap from one of the tree branches. “Let’s start with whether you’ve ever fired one of these before.”
“I shot that greenfire weapon back in Q4,” Nicole said, wincing at the memory. “Probably not the same.”
“Not much,” Jeff confirmed. “A projectile gun has a kick—means it recoils into your shoulder—and the slug also drops with distance. You didn’t have to worry about either of those with the greenfire gun. Kahkitah, how many hollow balls do you have?”
Kahkitah peered down at the ground beside him. “Approximately thirty.”
Jeff wrinkled his nose. “Eight men in Bungie’s team, and we need to budget at least four per in case of misses. Not enough for us to use any of them for practice shots.”
“Hold it,” Nicole said as a sudden, horrible thought struck her. “Are you saying I’m going to be the one who shoots them?”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Nicole retorted. “We just settled that I’ve never shot something like this before, remember?”
“We’re not talking sniper levels of marksmanship here,” Jeff soothed. “You just need to hit their chests or cheeks.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Actually, you want their chests,” Allyce spoke up. “The gas is slightly lighter than air, and you want it to float up into their noses and mouths.”
“So just their chests,” Jeff said, nodding to her. “Even easier. You hit their chests, the balls pop, the liquid evaporates, they breathe it in, and we’re good to go.”
“Okay,” Nicole said. “But you’re the soldier. You’re the one who knows how to shoot straight.”
“I’m the Marine,” he corrected her. “And I’d be happy to do it, except that I’m also the one who’s supposed to be leading the blue team charge. I can’t very well do that and sit up on the riverbank shooting at the Greenies.”
Nicole looked at Allyce. But the doctor had her full attention on her work, clearly intent on staying out of the conversation. “Kahkitah?” Nicole asked, turning to the Ghorf. “Help me out, will you? You know I can’t do this.”
“On the contrary,” Kahkitah said. “I know deep in my soul that you can do it. You’ve done so many other remarkable things since coming to the Fyrantha. All you need is some practice.”
“Which is going to be a problem,” Jeff said. “Our gimmicked balls are about the same weight as the ones with paint in them, so that part should be all right. The problem is that if the Shipmasters get a look at a whole bunch of yellow trees and rocks they’re likely to get suspicious. This whole thing depends on them not figuring out what we’re doing.”
Nicole looked past Kahkitah’s shoulder, to where the upper edge of the river could be seen churning through the channel. “Why don’t I just shoot into the river?” she asked. “That’s where Kahkitah is dumping the paint from the empties, isn’t it?”
“Well … yes,” Jeff said, frowning in thought. “How are you going to see where you’re hitting?”
“She could hang a small weight from a tree branch,” Kahkitah suggested. “If it moves after she fires, then she’ll know she hit it.”
“If she does that, she’ll be shooting downhill,” Jeff pointed out. “That’s a little different from shooting up or on the level.”
“But she’ll be shooting downhill during the actual battle, won’t she?” Kahkitah asked.
“Well … yeah, I guess she will,” Jeff conceded. “Okay, then. Let me find a stone and some tubing. I’ll pace off a course and set you up a target.”
“Unless you’re too tired,” Kahkitah said, looking at Nicole.
“Thanks, but I’ve had all the sleep I need,” Nicole assured him.
Or at least, she told herself grimly, she’d had all the sleep she was likely to get.
* * *
Jeff set up the range, gave her some basic instruction, fired off a couple of shots, and then watched as she did the same. After that, he turned the gun over to her and headed back to Allyce and Kahkitah to finish work on the drug balls.
Shooting was easy. Shooting accurately wasn’t. Jeff had pulled out fifty of the balls to use with the Setting Sun drug, leaving about a hundred for Nicole to practice with.
It took every single one of them, and she probably could have used another hundred. Still, by the time the gun was empty she felt reasonably confident that she could shoot with the accuracy Jeff said she needed.
Of course, the only movement her target rock exhibited was a slow rhythmic swinging in the light breeze, with the occasional jerk if it caught an extra-high splash. Bungie and the green team would be moving a lot more than that as they headed into battle. Worse, the minute they realized someone was shooting at them, they would be running and dodging and ducking and doing everything they could to throw off her aim.
Which meant she would have to deliver the drug as quickly and accurately as she could, and hope no one caught on until it was too late.
Night had fallen by the time she fini
shed her practice and rejoined the others. They were still working to fill the balls, but Jeff took a few minutes to carefully load what they had into the tubular paintball magazine.
The Q1 arena night was about six hours long. Luckily, it wasn’t a complete darkness, which meant Jeff and Allyce could continue to work without having to do everything by touch. It would be easier if they moved to the hive, where there was plenty of light, but Jeff didn’t want to risk taking the work into the more populated areas where the Shipmasters or Wisps might walk in on them.
It was an hour before dawn when they finally finished.
* * *
“Okay,” Jeff said as he loaded the last of the balls into Nicole’s gun. “You sure you can get across on your own?”
“Sure,” Nicole assured him. Now that she knew there weren’t any dangerous rocks in the river, she could probably find a good spot near the bluffs at the river mouth. If that didn’t work, she could always have the Fyrantha turn off the water again for a few seconds.
“Because Kahkitah can go with you if you want.”
“No, you’ll need him if this goes sideways,” Nicole said. She looked at Kahkitah. “That’s all right with you, isn’t it?”
“I will certainly protect them as best I can,” Kahkitah said hesitantly. “But we Ghorf aren’t really made for fighting.”
“We’ve already been through this,” Nicole reminded him. “Fighting in front of Fievj would be as bad for you as it would be for us. All I’m thinking is that you could get between Jeff and anyone who wants to stab him. Maybe grab the other guy’s trident and take it away from him. You can do that, right?”
“Yes,” Kahkitah said, more confidently this time. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Trust me,” Nicole said. “When are you going to dose everyone on our side?”
“About fifteen minutes before we head to the ocean,” Jeff said. “Allyce says the stuff should work pretty fast when it’s inhaled.”
Nicole thought about the cemetery in the Fyrantha’s basement, and the implication that people had once used Setting Sun to ease them into death. “Yes, I’m sure it does,” she murmured. “Any idea how long it lasts?”
