Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

A hexa cell pulsed, widened until it touched top and bottom of the forescreen. A world image swam in the center of the cell. “Arumda’m,” Ginny said. “That is where we are going.”

Shadith blinked.

Coincidence? That’s the world where Tinoopa’s son is. Hope he’s not in this, if he gets killed, what am I going to tell her?

Ginny tapped in a code, took the POV in a rapid slant downward until it hovered above an island shaped like a tadpole trying to bite its own tail, a curving ridge of mountains the bony protrusions of the tadpole’s spine. “Haed Nunn,” he said. “The Mimishay Foundation is there.” He tapped a sensor and a small red light began flashing at the back of the circle of water the tadpole’s head on one side and tail on the other. “There is some manual capacity, but its defenses are mostly controlled by the kephalos. I intend to infiltrate EYEs into that kephalos; once I have control of it, I can turn their defenses against them and slag the place.”

“Sounds simple enough. What about Rohant and the Dyslaera? They’re in there, aren’t they. How do we get them out?”

“Even before I left, half of them were dead and the others in such misery they would welcome death. Why complicate things?”

“Complicate! One tooth and a fingernail left, they’re coming out…”

As the ship swam through the insplit, the argument went on and on, taken up and dropped, taken up again.

Shadith stalked restlessly about the bridge; she stopped beside Ginny, fists on hips. “Why’d you bother coming for me? You don’t need what I do. You don’t listen to me. Why?”

“You are the one who will not listen. I have told you again and again, I do not know why I need you. That will only become apparent when you do something.”

“Do what?”

“You see? You do not listen. Is it too simple for you? I have no idea what. I will not know until you do it. I do know this. You will destroy either Mimishay or me. Because I am no threat to you at present, I can hope it will be Mimishay that will receive the force of your… aah… presence.”

“So I’m some goddam primal force?”

“Precisely.”

“You’re crazy. I suspected that and now I know. Primal force? Gah!”

He smiled at her, that characteristic small tight twitch of his pale lips; he was undisturbed by her skepticism and felt no need to defend himself.

Shadith went stomping off the bridge before she drowned in her own futility.

“Look, getting Rohant and the others out, that comes first. Then you can do what you want with Mimishay.”

If I’m a Primal Force, I might as well make it mean something. Ginny, you worm, I won’t let you fool with me. Sar! you want to see primal force, just keep this up.

“You cannot even know that any of them are alive.”

“If they aren’t, then there’s no problem, is there? If you go on with this the way you’ve planned it, you better call off the truce and shove me out a lock, because I’m going to use everything I’ve got to stop you.”

He stared at her a long moment, as if he considered that option, then, abruptly, he gave in. “Very well. How close must you be to control large beasts?”

“It depends on the beast and the circumstances, but say a circle of radius… um… twenty kilometers.”

“Then you can’t work from a synchronous orbit.”

“No. Certainly not.”

Tsipor stood up, came across the bridge with the short-legged sinuous walk that was like no other. “She lies.”

Ginny opened his eyes wider. “Really?”

“Linked to me her range is extended a hundredfold.”

“Well, Singer?”

Shadith scowled at Tsipor. “All right, she’s right, it’s certainly extended, I don’t know how far. Hundredfold? I doubt it. And in any case I don’t intend to try the limits. I mean to be on the ground when I work.”

“Very well.” He recalled the image of Haed Nunn. “Most of the… aah… pirate swarms are in the south, but there are several that make forays into northern waters. Mimishay has set up a rather primitive defense against attacks from these infested flotillas. It is primitive but effective since the ships are wood hulls and the weapons on them pitiful. Mimishay has strung a cable net across the mouth of the bay. There.” A red line leaped across the open section of the circle of water. “It can be charged with enough current to electrolyze the seawater and char any hull that slams against it. It usually is not. However, Mimishay does keep a certain number of sensors alert for intrusion.”

He shifted the POV down the curve of the world until Haed Nunn vanished and a string of rocky islets occupied the center of the cell. “Haedsa… that’s island chain… Chavada. Barren, not much fresh water, a few fishing families. I will take the ship down, land her there.” Yellow light flashing on one of the midsized rocks. “This is a free-trader world, ships come in all the time, many use the Field at Tos Tous, but others land wherever they take a notion. Mimishay notes but ignores them.

“It is my intention to approach Haed Nunn on miniskips and come through the mountains rather than take the easier approach on the bay side. Mimishay has been undisturbed on that Haed for at least two centuries, so the Brothers and the Powers are careless about security; they depend on those kephalos-driven defenses. Because these neither sleep nor lose their edge, they forget that such things have their limits and if focused in one direction will ignore a small, nonthreatening intrusion coming at their backs, as it were. We will need a distraction. If you are able to locate and mind-ride a number of large sea beasts, drive them against the net at the mouth of the bay, that should be sufficient to cover us. Can you do this? Remember, you will be straddling a miniskip while you work.”

“Can you put my emskip on a lead? I can’t boot whales and navigate at the same time.”

“Yes. We can do that.”

“Then you’ve got your distraction.”

The storm wind beating at their backs, they rode the heavily-laden miniskips across the water, flying so low the spume whipped from the wavetops slapped into their legs. Clouds boiled low overhead and phosphorescence ran in crooked green lines through the troubled swell.

Shadith felt the storm as a distant discomfort; the greater part of her consciousness was in the calm deeps, split between three megaforms, great black creatures half a kilometer long from blunt nose to the tips of the massive tentacles, whose slow steady beats drove them through the water. They were solitary beasts, uneasy so close together. Again and again, she had to herd them back as they struggled to turn aside, to put a more comfortable space between them. She was troubled by what she was doing, riding them to their deaths, but Rohant was her friend and he needed her help. Her eyes were squeezed shut and tears leaked from under her lids, yet each time the beasts tried to peel off, she tightened her grip and drove them on.

The beasts hit the net as the miniskips passed from water to land and began the steep winding climb through the jagged cliffs on the stormside of the mountains.

Shadith shivered and groaned as a massive jolt of electricity fried one of the beasts before she could free herself from his brain; she heard the hooming roars of pain and fury as the other two exploded with killing rage and flung themselves against the lethal net.

The winds snatched and shoved at the emskips, tried to drive them into the walls of the ravine they were sweeping along. The tether joining her emskip to Tsipor’s whipped her about, threatened to wheel both of them into a down-spiral that would turn them into bloody meat.