Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

“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.

The Dyslaeror snorted, then groaned, lifted his head and sneezed. “Sar! What…”

Shadith scrambled back to him, pinched his earlobe hard. “Move, we’re in the middle of a war.”

A section of the Compound shuddered then fell in on itself, the debris melting into stone liquefied by the heat seeping through from that seething boiling ring outside the shield.

Rohant got unsteadily to his feet. “My head…”

Shadith caught hold of his arm. “Move it, Ro. Lean on me. Come on.”

A lander turned too late, exploded; the pieces pattered down among the trees, starting small fires that died when sap gushed forth from the injured branches and cup-shaped leaves flipped over, dumping the rain they’d collected.

They staggered through the tree clumps and brush thickets until they reached the stream. The water was hot, steaming, but they got across at the cost of some minor burns and sank onto the relatively cool earth on the far side.