Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

Images on the small screen, pale green lines, a race through successive cross sections, a jolting stop and the great mainscreen flared into activity. A huge cavernous space about massive shipdrives, control stations dark and dusty except for the central area. A complex mix of sounds, the explosions of the pellet guns, the ping-whine of ricochets, shouts, groans, clatter of feet on catwalks, unidentifiable knocks, cracks, thuds. Four bodies motionless on the catwalks, some distance apart, no two on the same level. A fighter lay bleeding slowly from one arm, the other three were low-level techs in the Drive Gang. A small dark form darted out of shadow, shot at something, threw himself into a twisting roll that took him back into shadow. Adelaar’s shoulders twitched. “Quale.”

“Right. Hailer, hmm?”

“Ready. You talk, they’ll hear.”

“Right.” He set a hand on the back of her chair. “The Bridge is taken,” he said. “If you surrender, you’ll be set down on Tassalga alive and in good shape. If you continue your resistance, you’ll be dead. Keeping on is futile. In a few days we will be sending this Warship into the sun. Kanlan Gercik, collect your squad, get them out of there. We can seal any holdouts in the Drive Sector and let them fry.” His voice was weary, uninterested in what the holdouts decided, a lazy baritone smooth as cream and far more convincing than a raucous scream. Aslan scribbled rapidly, scatter-shot words that said, in effect, I-don’t-care-what-you-do can be more terrifying than hate and rage.

The image went silent, still.

A moment later Kanlan Gercik’s voice sounded from somewhere near the control bank. “Zhurev, Meskel Suffor, Harli Tanggаr, move your units toward the entrance. Meskel, can you get to your wounded friend?”

In his soft slurring west coast accent, Meskel Suffor answered, “If the others give me cover; better so, if the Gang shows a touch of smarts and surrenders.”

“Start moving. Quale Yabass, is there any way of getting the name of the Engineer?”

Quale shifted his gaze to Adelaar, raised his brows.

Adelaar nodded, worked her pads and pulled up three names on the small screen. “They’re all Huvveds. Erek Afa Kaffadar, Boksor Tra Shiffre, Marak Sha Yarmid.”

“Any idea which?”

“No indication.”

“Kanlan Gercik, did you hear that?”

“If you could repeat them?” After Quale finished the list, Kanlan called out, “Erek, Bokso, Marak, whichever you are. Talk to me.”

More silence, broken mainly by scuffs and some tings where something metallic touched a rail or a piece of equipment, the members of the squad edging toward the entrance.

“What guarantee do we have?” The voice was gruff, impatient, with the arrogant edge of a top-rank Huvved.

“The guarantee you’ll fry.”

“We have the drives.”

“So you can sit and watch them hum as you head for the sun.” A snort. “You got some kind of idea you can run them without the shipBrain?”

Silence.

Muttering.

A scuffle.

Then a different voice. “Hang on a minute.” More muttering.

A dull thump (pellet gun tossed onto the rubbery floor covering), more thumps, more guns.

“That’s it. Hold everything. We’re coming out. We got to carry Tra Shiffre.”

“I hear. Quale Yabass?”

“You can start forward with them, but don’t hurry, we’ve got to see what’s happening with the other squads. Anything comes up; give us a yell, Adelaar will keep an ear tuned to you. Questions?”

“That seems to do it.”

“Hanifa,” Quale looked down at the Diver. “Anything you want to say?”

Her eyes were fixed on the screen. She was frowning; when he spoke, she shook her head impatiently. “Get on with it.”

“Gotcha. Adelaar, Play Sector next, then the Sleep Sector.”

The green lines of the schematic flashed again onto the main screen and flickered through cross sections as before. Then the lines were gone and a Pleasure Field filled the screen, roughly oval and somewhat larger than the chamber outside the Bridge door, a cheerful, bright-colored space broken into smaller and larger areas, irregular shapes partly open to the main arena, a combination of bistro, gymnasium, orgy-drum, sensorama, and less-dedicated spaces that catered to assorted individual quirks and kinks.

The mat in the gymspace was littered with flaccid dreaming bodies and the two squads assigned to that area were busily trotting in and out of the Pleasure Field carting in more of them, men and women, crew and support, some naked, some dressed in fantastic costume, some in uniform, some in grubby overalls. The men and women doing the carting looked sweaty, but exuberantly carefree; the grimness she’d marked in them when they marched on board the tug was still there, but only as a ghostly background to the present pleasure. Despite their visible weariness, they were shouting ribald jokes at each other, trading insults and speculations about the activities of the bodies they carried. As far as Aslan could tell, no one had been killed, no one injured badly enough for the wound to show. No bandages, no bruise, no scrapes.

Quale turned to Adelaar. “Sound?”

“Ready.”

“Tazmin Duvvar. You round somewhere? Akkin Siddaki?”

Laughter, whoops, hill-and-grass raiderband salutes to Elmas Ofka that quickly degenerated into obscurely idiomatic barbs aimed at Quale and the Bridge party, (Aslan scribbled rapidly, getting the essence of the more interesting insults, the hill-and-grassers were famous for the inventiveness of their invective), two of Elmas Ofka’s isyas shouted more intimate greetings, drunk on victory as much as wine; ordinary proprieties stripped away, they floated on a cloud of euphoria.

One of the older raiders moved apart from the rest, set his hands on his hips and roared the others to silence. “Varak, go get Tazmin. What you want, Quale Yabass?”

“We were getting bored sitting around up here, started wondering what was happening in the other sectors. Looks like you’ve pretty well cleaned up your area. Any problems?”

Akkin Siddaki waited until Tazmin Duvvar pushed through the gathering Hordar and reached his side. “Quale,” he said. “Wants to know if we’ve got problems.”

“Cartage mainly,” Tazmin said, “these kokotils were drunk, drugged, or screwing their brains if any out; it was like shooting fish in a barrel. If you could dig up some transport for us, it’d save a lot of sweat.”

Akkin nodded. “We’ve got most of the ship people transferred here, there’s some whores and some of the kitchen crew still laying where they fell, maybe a dozen, not much more than that. Like you see, there’s quite a pile of them. There’s a transtube outlet just off this chamber. We could stuff them in that if you’ll have the yabass Adelaar program the tube and arrange a welcoming party; you’ve got the holding space ready yet?”

“It should be by the time you’re finished. Adelaar just got here, she’ll take care of that once we finish this survey. Pels, see what you can find for transport.”

“Right. Soon as I can get access. Adelaar?”

“When we finish this, I’ll free some lines for you.”

“Quale Yabass?” Akkin Siddaki leaned forward, his dark face intent.

“About ten minutes, if I had to make a guess.”

“That’s not it. I’ve got a brother in the Sleeper squad, how’s he doing?”

“We haven’t checked that one yet, it’s next on our list. There was some trouble in the Drive area, one wounded, a raider from the west coast, I think. I don’t know how serious. Want me to get the name?”

“When you get a minute.”

“Right. If anything comes up, give a yell. Adelaar, Sleepers.”

A few minutes later a short stretch of dimly lit corridor took up most of the screen. Empty. Silent. A short distance from the eyepoint a small oval crystal touched with honey-amber the lifeless neuter colors of the walls and floor. The doorway below the crystal gaped open. The light inside the room was a ghostly grayish yellow that merged seamlessly with the light in the corridor.