Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

Shadith struggled back into herself, fought with the clip connecting the tether to the emskip shaft, finally managed to trip it.

The minute she was loose, the emskip swerved wildly, her left leg scraped along the stone; part of her trousers tore away, a flap of skin ripped loose, then off; the skipfender squealed and threw up a fan of sparks, the noise hammered at her, the winds hammered at her, the skip bucked under her.

Grimly she fought for control.

After what seemed an eternity of confusion and noise, the drive bit, the emskip straightened out; she pushed the speedlever down and hurried after Tsipor and Ginny who were both nearly out of sight.

The place Ginny had chosen for their base was a moraine flat with a tumble of huge boulders and a litter of stones from the size of eggs to sofa pillows; the flat was halfway up the tallest mountain west of the Mimishay compound.

They labored to clear a space for the domes, a figure eight with one lobe twice the size of the other. Though the wind had abated once they reached the eastern slopes of the mountains, the rain lashed at them, coming down hard and cold as they bent and lifted the stones, carried them to the ragged wall they were building about the site. Bent and lifted and carried. Jammed fingers in the dark against stones they couldn’t see and scraped off skin and worked their backs until even their bones ached.

In the bay below, the tumult was, calming as the last two black beasts died and their bodies heaved against the net, lifting and dropping with the storm swell, nearly invisible in the dark water. After one look, Shadith bent to the stones and labored with a desperate intensity, using pain and fatigue to shut out the things she didn’t want to see or think about.

Ginny inflated the shelters into mottled gray domes that shed light even more efficiently than they shed the rain, then he exploded anchors deep into the mountain to hold them steady despite the snatching of the wind.

Shadith crouched in the backcurve of the larger dome using a small handpump to blow up an air mattress. Her head was wrapped in a towel and now and then she stopped her pumping to shiver; the thin silken undersuit she’d put on was dry, but no barrier to the drafts the air machine was blowing through the domes.

Tsipor crouched silently across from her, holding herself as far from the others as she could in the cramped space.

Ginny sat on an air cushion before a low table, working quickly, neatly, clipping components together, sliding accumulators from their cases and snapping them into the receptors of the shield generator, the EYE controls, the viewscreen, and the rest of the equipment that ran the domes.

Half an hour later he grunted and sat on his heels. “That is done.” Over his shoulder, he said, “I must wait for the storm to abate further before I launch the EYEs. Singer, are you able to reach into the Compound?”

Shadith moved onto the air mattress, sat with her legs drawn up, her arms draped over her knees. “I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea first. I’m still cold to the bone.”

Ginny smiled, startling her with the sly amusement she felt in him. “I live only to serve you, Singer.”

“Yeh, yeh, sure you do.” She spread a blanket over her knees, pulled the towel off, and began to rub at her hair.

Shadith set the mug on the floor and stretched out on her stomach, her head resting on crossed forearms. Tsipor knelt beside her, narrow hand cold on the back of her neck.

She reached.

Rohant lay awake and tense on something hard and uncomfortable enough to keep him shifting position frequently. He was waiting-she didn’t, couldn’t, know for what.

She left him at it and felt about for the other Dyslaera. Ginny said half of them were dead. She didn’t believe him. He’d say anything to get what he wanted.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

One Omphalite, probably a guard on watch.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Out and out she spiraled the point presence of her reach , a sick cold hollow growing beneath her ribs.

Nothing but Omphalites-except for a few local women clustered in a small tight area near the northern end of the Compound.

It didn’t have to mean the other Dyslaerors were dead; they could have been mindwiped like her, dumped in a Contract labor levy. Could have been. It was only a thread of a hope and it shriveled as she tried to cling to it. Ginny’s report about Omphalos’ intentions was too convincing. They were dead, disposed of, all but Rohant.

She sprang back to Rohant, scanned his body. No real damage. Relief flooded her and she sobbed before she could stop herself.

Tsipor’s hand tightened on her neck.

She steadied and went back to searching the Compound, locating and counting the Omphalites so Ginny could better avoid them when he sent in his EYEs. And she could begin planning to break Rohant free.

Shadith opened her eyes, groaned, pushed herself up till she was sitting cross-legged on the mattress, the blanket draped loosely about her. “Stylus,” she said.

Tsipor crawled across the dome to the place where she’d been squatting before, sat there, crimson eyes narrowed to slits, face blank.

Ginny tossed Shadith a clipboard, a stylus held to it with a small magnet.

“Five hundred and nine,” she said. “Five hundred and ten if you count Rohant. No Dyslaera there except him…” She began marking clusters of circles. “These are sleepers, not to scale, though I’m keeping angles and organization as accurate as I can. I didn’t find any of the other prisoners. I suppose they’ve been processed and sent… wherever…” She finished the circles and began laying down x’s, some of them with dotted lines and arrows indicating direction. “This lot are the wakers. The ones without pointers aren’t moving, probably sitting at terminals or watchposts, the others are going here and there, either insomniacs or guards on patrol.” She added a rectangle. “Rohant. He’s not far from the outer wall; it shouldn’t be too hard to pry him loose.”

“The EYEs go in first.”

“Yes. But once you’ve got them in place, I’m going to blow that cage and pull him out.”

“That argument is finished, Singer; you annoy me when you bring it up again and again.”

“All right. I just want things clear.” She stretched out again on the mattress, flipped the blanket over her. “Wake me when you’re ready to go.”

Miralys and Voallts on the hunt-Black House

The three Dyslaer transports plunged into the atmosphere and sped across the night sky sheathed in halos of superheated gases. They dipped low over Haed Ke, released a swarm of Capture Landers and went flaring up and out, settling into synchronous orbit above Tos Tang, a small unimportant seaside town, and Black House, a rambling structure growing like lichen on the stony mountains above Tos Tang.

Aboard Anyagyn’s Cillasheg, Miralys prowled restlessly about the bridge, maintaining a precarious control on her temper and her needs.

Huddled in one of the observer seats by the offside wall, Kikun watched her with admiration and apprehension; it was rather like hanging around a volcano about to erupt.

Beside him, Autumn Rose was busy with the totacorder tapped into the ship’s kephalos, recording for Digby the attack and everything that happened aboard the Cillasheg; this was his price for the data he provided, and the contacts.

Agile as stingships and almost as lethal (courtesy of Digby’s sources), the Capture Landers swept down on the Black House, blew out the nodes where the defense centers were located, then retreated into a ragged disk hovering over the House.