Glen Cook - Ceremony

"I am not much concerned about how the future recalls me, so long as there is a future. And I am still battling for it out here. In a hunt that, I am sure, will not be in vain, and that will not last much longer."

Bagnel bowed his head as if to mask his expression.

"Well, tradermale. Adventurer. Want to make it a working holiday? I can squeeze another body onto my darkship. You could be the first male ever to see new worlds."

III Bagnel stepped down off the darkship and surveyed the encampment with the look of one returning home. "I'll confess this, Marika. I never once worried about the project."

Marika lifted a lip in amusement. "It could not have been that bad. It wasn't the same as traveling in High Night Rider?"

"No. It was not the same. As you know perfectly well. It was more like falling forever. It was more unnerving than riding a darkship at home. There is something under your feet there, even if it is several thousand feet down. Still ... "

"What is that look in your eye?" Marika kept one eye on her bath and Grauel and Barlog, making sure they made sure the darkship was being readied for its next journey. She ruled the base strictly. She insisted all darkships be ready to lift at a moment's notice. The Serke could strike at any time. Would strike, she suspected, if they knew where to find her. She was stuck to their trail like the stubbornest hunting arft.

"Wonder, I suppose. I have to admit that, harrowing as it was, the experience touched something in me. I could develop a taste for exploration."

"Give up the mirrors, then. I am here. The darkship is here."

He looked at her narrowly, startled and tempted. "I think not, Marika. Your sisters would not understand."

"I suppose not. It was just a thought. Maybe someday. When the project is complete. When the Serke have been disposed of. When the aliens have been found and some sort of accommodation with them has been reached. Wouldn't it be in the grand tradition for us to fly away and never be seen again?"

He picked it up as a game. "Yes. We could just go on exploring, skipping from star to star, forever. We might be touched occasionally, in the far distance, and rumors would rise about a ghost darkship flitting out on the edge of the void. Young, fresh Mistresses would bring their darkships out to hunt the legend."

"But it couldn't be. We couldn't carry enough stores. And where would I find willing bath?"

"Oh, well."

"Tomorrow we will go out again. There is no end of stars in this sector-though those really worth investigating are running short."

But Marika returned to space much sooner.

The night was just hours old when a sudden, sharp, panicky touch smote Marika. Darkship! Starting down. Not from home.

Marika rushed from her hut. The base began coming to life around her. Darkship crews rushed to their ships. The touch came again. Serke! Oh. They have detected us. They are starting back up. They are fleeing. They are very frightened. The otherworld reeks of their fear. Hurry!

"Grauel! Barlog! Will you come on? We're going up!"

Sleepy-eyed, the untouched huntresses had come out to learn the cause of the commotion.

Marika's bath raced toward the wooden darkship, pre-flight rites forgotten. Marika tossed her rifle across her shoulder and dashed after them, shouting, "Come, you two. The Serke."

Grauel and Barlog raced for the darkship after snatching their weapons.

One voidship was off the ground already, rising swiftly. Marika's eyes were fiery as she glared at her senior bath, who was not hustling the silver bowl around fast enough to suit her.

"Wait!"

Bagnel wobbled toward them, trying to keep his trousers from tripping him by holding them up with one paw.

"No," Marika said. "This is the real thing, Bagnel. There are Serke up there."

Bagnel played deaf. He lined up for his turn at the silver bowl. The bath muttered something unappreciative, let him sip. Grauel extracted another flask of liquid from the locker under the axis platform and dumped it into the bowl. Then she dug out a spare rifle and forced it upon him. "One I owe you, male."

"I see you still carry the one I gave you at Akard."

"It has been a faithful tool. Like me, though, it is getting old and cranky."

Marika swore. The other darkship was aloft now. The first had dwindled to a speck, its Mistress driving it hard. And she had not yet gathered her ghosts. "You meth strap down good," she said. "Everyone strap down. This is going to be the ride of your lives."

Bagnel was strapped already. He began disassembling the weapon Grauel had given him. The huntress nodded with approval. Seated, she and Barlog did likewise with their own weapons.

Marika snatched the bowl from the senior bath, gulped its contents, then bounced to her place at the tip of the wooden dagger. She went down through her loophole and snagged ghosts, lifted off, and continued gathering ghosts as she rose, dropping smaller specimens as she snatched ever bigger, stronger denizens of the otherworld. She pressed mercilessly.

She overhauled one darkship at fifty thousand feet and the other before it made orbital altitude. All the while she caressed the void with the touch, tracking the Serke darkship as it fled toward where it could clamber into the Up-and-Over. She soon had its line of retreat clearly defined in her mind.

It pointed toward a section of cloud she had not yet explored. She sketched an imaginary circle around that line, finding only four stars within it. She discarded the one farthest off center.

She reached with the touch and told the other two Mistressess of the Ship, We will pursue. There are three stars close to their line of flight. I will take this one. She sent a picture of the stars and indicated which she had chosen for herself, then assigned each of them one of the two remaining. Push yourselves. Try to arrive before they do.

That was unlikely, she thought. Even for her, with her advantages. Though time lapses in the Up-and-Over depended on the strength and talent of the individual Mistress of the Ship, the Serke Mistress had a long start and death raving behind her to motivate her.

Marika began pushing down her chosen course before she reached orbital altitude and began gathering ghosts for the Up-and-Over long before she reached the traditional jumping distance. She grabbed at the Up-and-Over only minutes behind the Serke-long before she should have. Echoes of silent terror came from her bath, whom she had pushed near hysteria already with her demands.

Blackness, twisting. A sensation of infinite nothing. A hint of a deep space ghost, a great black ghost, startled by the voidship's passage.

Then light again. The target star lay nearby. Marika struggled to gain her bearings, groggy from the violence of her plunge through the Up-and-Over.

The bath recovered more slowly than she. While she waited on them Marika reached into the surrounding void, searching for the Serke darkship.

Mentally righted, the senior bath left her station to prepare another silver bowl.

Marika's probe revealed that the star had no planets. It might have had at one time, but something had happened. Perhaps too close a brush with another star. The surrounding void teemed with rocky fragments, some of them bigger than the moon Biter back home. None were big enough to retain an atmosphere, and nowhere could Marika sense the betraying glow of life.

There were no Serke bases here.

And no Serke darkship.

She stalked up the blade of the wooden dagger to see how Grauel, Barlog, and Bagnel had fared. She had drawn upon them as well as upon the bath, though the strength they had to lend was feeble.

Bagnel looked sick, like he might vomit any second. He was down, clutching the framework with his eyes sealed. Grauel and Barlog looked strained and a little stunned by the savagery of the passage, but they had been with her long enough and had been through enough to be accustomed to the occasional violent passage. Though this had outdone everything that had gone before.