Shadowkill sq-3, page 36
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
Miralys
The man in the screen wore a coarse brown robe with the cowl pulled so far forward his face was lost in shadow, all but the point of a long narrow chin. He sat at a rustic desk, his hands hidden inside his voluminous sleeves. “Who are you and why do you threaten us?” he said, his voice mild and faintly metallic, passing through a distorter, something that undercut the image he was trying to project. “We are peaceful students here, acquiring merit through works of the mind. If you want gold, we have none. Why do you come with intent to attack?”
Miralys’ ears snapped down and back; her lips came open showing her teeth; anger-musk rolled off her. She waited for several seconds before she spoke, waited until she had control. “You have ours,” she said. “We want ours and payment for our dead. You have stolen my mate, my Ciocan. Give back what you have taken from me.”
“I do not understand what you are saying, Dyslaera. We are simple Brothers, here. Whoever told you…”
Kikun squeaked as Grandmother Ghost nipped him hard. “Now,” he shouted.
“… we were holding…”
Anyagyn tapped the sensor under her thumb.
Down below, the Capture Landers shifted position in a preset repatterning that left no lander occupying the original space of another.
… any of your people…”
A double dozen cutter beams drove through the suddenly empty places where the landers had been. They wavered a moment in futility, then swung about, hunting the targets that had moved too fast for them, slippery sliding dots of light flipped about by Dyslaera muscle and Dyslaera reflexes, sliding too fast, too fast…
The screen went blank, the transmission interrupted as the defensive shield flashed into place around the Compound.
The landers struck back. Some played cutter beams of their own, probing at the shield, getting nowhere while others used more specialized weapons Digby had dug up for them…
Dyslaera Fighters
Sugnarn pulled his lander in a tight circle about a cutter beam, dusted it with rot grains that went skittering and glittering down the beam edges, crawled inside the projector, and began eating everything they touched. Twenty seconds later the beam withered and died, but Sugnarn didn’t bother looking back, he was already dusting his third beam.
##
Once she was sure there was a flesh operator behind it, that it had been clipped loose from the kephalos, Hannys flirted with a cutter beam, letting it come close enough to graze the side of her lander but never NEVER close enough to do serious damage, teasing it down and down until it was straining in its gimbals, jammed so hard the operator could barely move it, then she dropped into the hole created in the defenses, skimmed along the shield and laid down a line of thermix eggs that hit the ground and began to melt down into bedrock, following the shield down and down, stone bubbling and seething until that section of the Compound was resting uneasily in a thin layer of lava while steam generated by rain hitting the melt rose in agitated clouds about the dome.
Hannys went screaming up and out, dancing, elusive as a thought, hunting for another beam to tease.
##
Tatakarn was a hair slow on one of his turns; a missile caught the edge of his drive projector, blew the lander into dust.
##
When Jarnys saw her brother die, her concentration went-only momentarily, but it was enough; The cutter-beam sliced into her lander, carved away a third of it, took most of the rightside of her body with it. Dying she went nincs-othran and shut the pain away; the drives were partially intact, she had some power; she fought the machine around, sent it screaming at one of flickering cuttergates in the defense shield, got her timing perfect, and took a large chunk of the Compound with her as she crashed.
Miralys
On the bridge of the Cillasheg Miralys watched the battle below her, her claws shredding the padding of the co-seat. Rohant was dead, his body might still be alive down there, somewhere, but that didn’t matter, he was dead and gone, beyond her reach. She wasn’t grieving yet, she wasn’t even angry now, just grimly determined to take that island down to bedrock, not even a microbe left alive.
Kikun and his Gods
Kikun watched the deathdance on the great forward screen and mourned the lives he’d known and not known. This was what his grandfolks had seen when the daivavig landed their guns on Keyazee’s shores, when they’d flown their hot air balloons overhead and dropped incendiaries around the easterness forces. This is what they’d seen and he could feel the terror of it.
His gods came to him.
Suddenly they were there, watching, demanding… Jadii-Gevas stood behind Miralys, wild black eyes fixed on the screen. He was snorting and jerking his head, the antlertree swaying up and down, forward and back.
Spash’ats stood at the back of the bridge, bigger and darker than before, his darkness pressing against the glow from the screen.
LIFE NOT DEATH, Spash’ats rumbled at Kikun. What must be done, see that it is done without excess, that it is finished quickly and cleanly as such things go. You can do this, Nayol Hanee, you must do this.
Xumady snorted and danced across the control panels and sensorboards beneath the great forescreen, his nimble black paws flickering over and around the nimble clawed hands of the Dyslaera working there, his long limber body humping and flattening. He sang a wordless song of fierce triumph, a hot joyous song of rage and hate as the Mimishay compound began to crumble under the blows from the landers. And when a lander burned to ash or went tumbling in a black arc to the boiling stone, he sat up on his haunches, his long back straight and stiff, his short forelegs stretched wide, and he keened his grief and the Dyslaera grief. He was all passion and heat, his fire beating at the cool restraint of Spash’ats’ dark reason.
’Gemla Mask hung before Kikun, white stripes across the black base flushing red with Xumady’s song, going ice-white and pure when Spash’ats was stronger… change and change again, a rhythm as steady as the splash of waves against the island’s shore. Kikun was Mask, was caught in the ebb and flow…
Then Grandmother Ghost was back, pinching him, her strong ancient fingers as punishing now as they were when she was still alive and he was a small naughty tokon playing in the mud.
Your girl’s down there, chile. You want her alive, you’d best go get her, Her and that Rohant. What I can see, they going to get themselves roasted any minute now. Gaagi, you gormless shade, haul your tail out here and show him…
She pinched at Kikun till he swung his chair about and stared at the emptiness where Spash’ats had drawn back into himself.
Gaagi bloomed from a speck of darkness and stood, a shining black figure against the matte black cloud of Spash’ats. He spread his arms, stood with his head turned so Kikun saw only one glittering eye and the powerful jut of the Raven’s beak. Gaagi did not dance this time, his feet were not defined this time; this time he spread his wings and swayed his torso to make the black scales shimmer. Light came from those shimmers, gathered in a cloudy sphere floating before his chest.
The clouds cleared to crystal and in the crystal Kikun saw two bodies lying facedown on the earth, Shadith and Rohant lying facedown and very still, dangerously close to the creeping melt around the periphery of the Compound.
Shadith/Ginny
Tsipor shook Shadith awake; with an awkward undulant flip of a hand, she pointed at the small screen.
It was divided into several cells, all but one dedicated to the EYEs worming their tortuous ways down toward the Compound kephalos buried deep in bedrock. The singleton cell was tied to the EYE Ginny had grudgingly sent to overlook Rohant; at the moment it was expanded by a factor of three and dominated the screen.
Rohant stood beside his cot, staring at the floor. An android was moving around him with ponderous weightiness and outside the open grill, a robed, cowled ward jigged from foot to foot, rapped the back of his metalled glove against the edge of the heavy steel grill, physical expressions of his agitation.
Shadith knelt beside Ginny, frowning at the image. “What’s going on? Middle of the night, isn’t it?”
“You see what I see.”
She heard the guard scream at Rohant, then watched the trio go trotting off. The. EYE followed them. She glanced at the other cells on the screen, but there was nothing in any of them to explain the guard’s nervous distress or this sudden summons. “Well, what do you think is happening?”
“I do not know. It has been very quiet down there since the sea beasts died.” Ginny hesitated, reached for the control pad, chew his hand back. “If I were where I should be…” he glanced at her, annoyance in his face and voice, “I would have the resources to explore this properly.”
Shadith snorted. “You can play that tune for someone else, Ginbiryol Seyirshi. If you’d meant to run this from orbit, we’d be there right now. Take too long, wouldn’t it. And you’d be too vulnerable a target. What do you want me to do?”
He gazed at her without expression for a long moment. “I could start another EYE for the Compound, but it would not arrive for an hour and that would most likely be too late. I want you to reach into the Director’s Chamber and tell me what is happening…” He swore shrilly as Rohant stunned the guard and took off running. “That could ruin… I have to know what the Omphalites are doing. Go search, Singer. That fool could bring the whole island down on us.”
“Good ol’ Lion. All right, all right.” She glanced at Tsipor, but the Raska wasn’t offering this time; she was focused intently on the cells of the screen.
Shadith swallowed a giggle, crawled back to the mattress. Rohant was out and running. Free. Running free. He’d done it for himself, he hadn’t been waiting for anyone to come and cut him loose. She felt like whooping, giggling, running out to meet him. She didn’t feel like stretching out and hunting eyes-and-ears inside that Compound, so she took her time getting there.
Ginny swore again as the images in most of the cells began breaking up; he bent over the pad, working frantically to reestablish full contact with his infiltrating EYEs.
“What is it?” she called to him. “What happened?”
“Defense shield came on,” he muttered. “Do what you are supposed to do, leave me alone.”
Shadith wiggled her brows. “Touch-ee,” she murmured, then sighed and crawled onto the mattress. Before she stretched out, she looked again at Rohant’s image. He was running easily, heading toward the mountains, now and again squinting up through the slackening rain at something she couldn’t see because the EYE was focused downward, centered on the Dyslaeror.
Tsipor hissed, scooted for the dome’s lock, was through it before either of the others had time to react.
##
She was back a few moments later. “A-ship-ess,” she said, worked her hands and did the other things she did better than words, creating corner-of-the-eye images of small ships darting restlessly about. “Attacking that.” One hand shot out, undulated toward the Compound.
“Miralys,” Shadith said.
Ginny twisted round, stared at her. “You looked?”
“No. A guess. But I’d bet my skin on it. Which is all I have at the moment. Kikun and Miralys, come for Rohant, maybe me. Rohant for sure. Who else is going to attack Omphalos?”
“Mimishay.”
“Whatever.”
Ginny danced his fingers over the pad, changing the direction and focus of the Rohant EYE, turning it upward so he could see and evaluate the attackers.
Shadith watched the conflict develop, saw one of the landers get hit and go down, taking out part of the Compound as it crashed, saw others teasing the cutter beams into a deadly sword-dance, saw sparkles sliding down beam edges, then the beams withering, winking out…
Ginny twisted his mouth in his small tight smile. “The way those landers are being handled, I suspect you are correct in your assumption, Singer. I am much reminded of the skirmishes at Koulsnakko’s Hole.” He tapped his thumb on the pad, the Rohant EYE shifted focus once more.
Rohant flung himself to one side, went rolling into brush, came onto his feet and fled deeper into the scattered clumps of trees, breaking line again and again until the beam hunting him winked out and left him with singed fur and a laboring wheeze.
“Hmm.” Ginny tapped a code into the pad, slid off the cushion and got to his feet. “We had better go collect him before he is killed by his kin or by accident. Singer, you will ride back with me, since our combined weights will be less than his. The skip would be dangerously sluggish trying to haul the two of you.”
* * *
Shadith/Rohant
“Ro!” Shadith shouted. “Old lionface, look up.” She brought the emskip swooping around him, leaned over, tugged at his hair, swept away again, landed the skip a short distance up the mountain, wriggled free of it, and ran for him.
“Shadow girl!” He scooped her up, hugged her so exuberantly she couldn’t speak or breath. Still laughing, he swung her round and round, then set her on her feet and held her away from him so he could look at her. “I thought you were dead.”
“Not quite. I’m hard to kill, Old Lion.”
“That yours up there?”
“More yours. Miralys and Voallts.”
“But you brought them.”
“No. I suspect it was Kikun. You’d never in your wildest dreams guess who…”
Ginny/Tsipor
Ginny slid the stunner back in its loops, tapped the caller. “Tsipor, come.”
The Raska rode her skip around a bulge in the mountain, landed beside him; she dismounted, walked across to the bodies. “Dead?”
“No. Merely stunned. Help me load them on the spare skip.”
“Why?” Tsipor lifted Rohant with an ease that startled Ginny, laid him along the bar of the miniskip, went back for Shadith, then began fastening them down, pulling the narrow woven straps tight and slapping the velcro patches together. “Why not dead?”
“I said I would not kill her for one year, Tsipor.” Ginny freed a clump of Shadith’s hair from a patch, pressed the closure tight. “Besides,” he straightened, “she could very likely still be an important force against Omphalos. You have not seen destruction swirling in a vortex about her, leaving her untouched. I have. You have the tether?”
Her eyes so dark a crimson they were almost black, the Raska tossed him the plastic cable. “Canna take cross t’ water ssso.”
“I have no intention of trying. We will leave them down by the Compound.” He looked at the clumsy bundle on the shaft, his mouth tightening into a shallow curve. “If she dies from friendly fire, that is the Lady’s Throw, not mine. I would like that. I do not expect it. Come.”
##
They slipped downslope following the stream that curved past the northern corner of the Compound, sheltered from observation by the trees that grew thickly along its banks.
As they reached the edge of the attack zone, chance took the hotspots of the fight to the south, away from them. Ginny nodded his head, signed his thanks to the Lady, and brought both the skips to land. He dismounted and began ripping loose the straps. Without comment, Tsipor joined him and helped him free the bodies.
“You take him, I will take her. You will not place him in the melt, but on the grass that is left.”
“Iss better dead.”
“Perhaps so, but not by your hand or mine.”
##
They laid Shadith and Rohant facedown in the brittle dead grass at the edge of the trees, retreated to their skips, and started back along the stream.
##
Ginny shifted his arm, read his wristchron. “One hour,” he said aloud, enjoying the sound of the words. “In one hour the EYES will reach the kephalos and trigger the self-destruct. There will not be a microbe left alive.” He entered a code into the pad, got to his feet. “In Mimishay or in that swarm of landers.”
Tsipor was crouched against the back wall of the dome, brooding. Her eyes flickered as she saw him stand. She followed him out, bent to the nearest of the miniskips, straightened it up, and straddled the saddle.
Ginny laughed aloud. “No no, Tsipor, you will not need that. Ah. Yes. Mertoyl is admirably prompt.”
The small spherical lander came arcing down, hovered a hand-width above the ground, the lock irising open.
Unhurried despite the Capture Lander breaking from the melee over the Compound and racing toward them and a second ship, a skimmer, dropping down at them, Ginny stepped into the lock, passed through it into the small compact cabin. Tsipor came diving after him, gasping in her urgency. Before she had time to settle herself, the lander sealed up and darted away, fire from the chasing ship splashing after it-too late, much too late as Ginny’s transport came rushing down in a halo of overheated air, sucked the Lander into itself and went racing off, flaring from the atmosphere, heading for Teegah’s Limit and the Insplit.
Shadith/Rohant
Shadith groaned and sat up, brushing fragments of sodden grass from her nose and mouth, pushing soaked hair from her eyes. “Ro?”
Rohant lay beside her; he was still out, but beginning to twitch. There was an odd little creature rather like a miniature Kikun crouching in his dreadlocks, holding onto the hair with tiny six-fingered hands. It was eeping pitifully, blinking bright black eyes at her, shivering with terror but unwilling or unable to run.
A cutter beam came slicing past them, took the top off the tree behind them:
“Tsoukbaraim!” Shadith threw herself onto hands and knees, grabbed at Rohant’s tunic, and tried to haul him farther into the trees, away from the attack zone.
He was too heavy, she couldn’t budge him.
A missile exploded fifty meters off, sprayed them with earth and half-molten stone. The noise punched at her, the pressure slammed her onto her back, her mouth popping open. Steam from the rain drifted around her, the heat from it reddened her skin, burned her nose and throat.
