Diadem - Shadow of the Warmaster Part 23

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 s.p.a.ce about ma.s.sive s.h.i.+pdrives, 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 Ta.s.salga 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 Wars.h.i.+p 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 Tanggar, 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 movirig. Quale Yaba.s.s, is there any way of getting the name of the Engineer?"

Quale s.h.i.+fted 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 s.h.i.+ffre, 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 menibers of the squad edging toward the entrance.

"What guarantees 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 s.h.i.+pBrain?"

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 s.h.i.+ffre."

"I hear. Quale Yaba.s.s?"

"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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ces that catered to a.s.sorted individual quirks and kinks.

The mat in the gyms.p.a.ce was littered with flaccid dreaming bodies and the two squads a.s.signed 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 sc.r.a.pes.

Quale turned to Adelaar. "Sound?"

"Ready."

"Tazmin Duwar. You round somewhere? Akkin Siddaki?"

Laughter, whoops, hill-and-gra.s.s 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-gra.s.sers 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, net his hands on his hipsand roared the others to silence. "Varak, go get Tazmin. What you want, Quale Yaba.s.s?"

'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 Duwar 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 runk, drugged, or s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g their brains if any out; it ras like shooting fish in a barrel. If you could dig up Dme transport for us, it'd save a lot of sweat." Akkin nodded. "We've got most of the s.h.i.+p people transferred here, there's some wh.o.r.es 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 yaba.s.s Adelaar program the tube and arrange a wel-coming party; you've got the holding s.p.a.ce 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 Yaba.s.s?" 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.

The eyepoint moved, dipped into the sleeping cell.

Four bodies on the floor.

The eyepoint dropped to hover over the nearest. It swept from head to toe, raced back to the nape of the Hordar's neck and focused on a hexagonal black spot half-obscured by a strand of hair.

Elmas Ofka bit a cry in half. After a minute she said, "Dart." Her hands closed over the back of Pel's chair, tightening until it creaked under the pressure of her fingers. "All of them?"

The eyepoint continued to move. It searched the other three, centimeter by centimeter. It found more darts. It swept out, sped to the next occupied cell and dived inside.

Elmas Ofka saw Jirsy's startled, frozen face and stopped breathing for a long frozen moment. Then she shrieked with rage and grief, grabbed at her hair, tore loose hanks of it; Lirrit Ofka screamed, clawed at her face, her nails scoring b.l.o.o.d.y lines in her flesh. Then Karrel Goza and Jamber Fausse were there, holding them, confining their struggles, m.u.f.fling their cries, letting them bite and kick and scratch, accepting the pain as part of sharing the grief, a grief that grew more bitter as the eyepoint moved on and they saw the other dead, as Karrel Goza saw his cousin Geres sprawled in the Y-branch.

Aslan watched and automatically noted her impressions on the pad; she felt uncomfortable about writing while this was happening, she'd known little Jirsy Indiz and liked her; nonetheless, she wrote. The isya phenomenon was endlessly interesting. She hadn't understood before this how powerfully those bonds operated once the isya was formed; the strength of it was sud- denly made visible for her; the pain of the severance was apparent in theviolence of the women's reactions. Her stylus flew across the battered page.

More than kin, she wrote, closer than lovers. Karrel Goza seeing his cousin's body, wept, face red, anger and grief. None of this self-mutilation, this loss of control. The difference explainable by isya bonding? Or by culturally determined s.e.x role differentiation? s.e.x roles complex here. Women powerful/ powerless. Huvved/Hordar very different, their ideas about women. Suggest some-tone come, study isya phenom. Trakkar je Neves? Her subject, yes.

Contact, see if interest. Outsiders reaction isya hysteria revealing.

Consider. History of? Personality differential? Profession, its effect on . .

Quale leaned against the console, his face shuttered. He was looking away from the women, shut off from them by something in his past or in his character that washed out the flashes of strength he could show and left him looking oddly empty, as if he were so tired of living that he'd lost the ability to feel either joy or pain.

Adelaar looked over her shoulder, distaste her most visible reaction. She went back to what she was doing. Jaunniko called you one icy femme, Mama, maybe he was right. No, that's wrong. We've clawed at each other often enough; I can't accuse you of lacking pa.s.sion, Mama. You're just not interested in other people's pa.s.sion.

The Rau's ears twitched, closed in on themselves like fingers making a fist.

He kept working.

Elmas Ofka went suddenly quiet. She sucked in a breath, in and in and in, the soft sound seemed to last forever, to mute the other sounds on the Bridge, then she let the breath out. Again out and out, a long rasping sigh. She pushed against Jamber Fausse's arms. He dropped them and stepped back.

"Lirrit!" Her voice was sharp, demanding.

Lirrit broke a sob in half, stood in shuddering silence for another few breaths, then she pushed at Karrel Goza's chest and turned in a grim, controlled silence to watch what was happening on the screen.

"Who?" Elmas Ofka said, her voice soft as thistledown and cold.

Quale straightened, seemed to shake himself, sloughing the detachment that had grayed him down. "Parna-lee," he said.

She swung around, her temper flaring, but before she could say anything, Churri spoke. "Parnalee," he said. "He played you like a gamefish, Hanifa.

That's his business. He's good at it."

"I don't understand."

Churri shrugged. "Who does. Crazy is crazy."

Elmas Ofka closed her eyes, brushed a hand across her face. "I see. Find him.

Now."

Quale raised a brow. "Why bother? Leave him in his hole and let him fry."

Elmas Ofka trembled, controlled herself immediately. "Find him," she said. "We can argue what happens afterward."

Adelaar didn't wait to be asked; she huddled over her sensor pads, called up strings of words and numbers, scanned them, repeated the process several times, selected some, re-entered them. Aslan watched the image flow, expand, contract, change in little and in toto, the glyphs and figures like minute green demons dancing to the beat of her mother's fingertips. The schematic filled the screen again, centered on the Bridge, the Navel. It flashed away in pie-slice wedges, a game of jackstraws with Mama's fingers picking surely through them. s.h.i.+vering among the green lines were fuzzy red lights and several pale ambers, arranged in cl.u.s.ters. Each time a light appeared, she exploded a small white dot in the center of it and went on without further reaction. One by one she swept through the wedges until she'd done them all; Aslan frowned, there seemed to be more wedges than the geometry of the s.h.i.+p allowed for. Mama's magic, play the numbers, ah! she bit back a giggle and scribbled on her pad.

Adelaar swung around. "I've located all lifesources that the s.h.i.+p can detect.

That means exactly what it says. There may be dead areas, this is an antique and badly maintained, and there are places in her deliber-ately kept off the record; if he knows about those places, well, he knows a lot too much. You're wrong, Quale. We don't dare let him wait us out."

Leaving them to chew that over, she kicked around, touched a sensor and leaned back to watch the screen as the Brain flipped from spot to spot, froze momentarily on a scene, long enough to take in the details, then moved on to the next. Akkin Siddaki and Tazmin Duwar supervising the tag end of the body-gathering. Flip-flip, body squads walking tiredly to the last few bodies, a wh.o.r.e here, a scutsweep there.

After a short stretch of looking on while the Brain flashed through scenes that she'd seen before, Adelaar moved restlessly, then pushed her chair around and leaned toward Pels; for several minutes she talked in an undertone to him.

The Rau listened, nodded, then got busy on the sensor pads at his substation, his eyes fixed on the notation screen. Over their heads the images flickered from the stunned s.h.i.+pfolk in the sleeping cells to the scattered bodies of the dead. Adelaar sat back, satisfied.

The eyepoint jumped to the Hordar and their prisoners marching up from the Drive Sector. Kanlan Gercik and his cousin Zhurev Iavru were the first to appear, scouting ahead for ambushes. The wounded west-coaster came next; he was stretched on an improvised litter being carried by Meskel Suffor and another west-coaster. Then three Hordar from Gercik's Raiders. Then the captive Drive Gang with more litters, two wounded, one dead. One stunned and heavily unconscious Huvved. Harli Tanggar had her sister isya Melly Birah with her and two women from another isya on the far side of the captives, all of them keeping a fierce eye on their prisoners. Behind them came the rest of the squad, the rearguard.

The eyepoint left them, whipped to the drive room, hovered momentarily over the cooling corpses, leaped again and focused on an ancient eremite living in a rat's nest of sc.r.a.ps and paper and scavenged bits of equipment, filthy white hair knotted on top his head, a few threads of beard, vermin crawling in and out of his hair, in and out of his layered filthy clothing.

Quale rubbed his hand along his jaw. "Makes you itch," he said.

"What?" Elrnas Ofka came quietly to stand beside him. She stared up at the image. "What are we looking at?"

Another s.h.i.+ft. Another mouse in the walls, this one painfully neat and weirder than the rat, he was walking through elaborate square corners, running a folded whiter-than-white cloth over every surface in his spa.r.s.ely furnished lair, an irregular s.p.a.ce created by the inters section of stressbeams and baffles, choosing the areas he dealt with according to a pattern in his miswired head.

"Discard," Quale said. "Took the measure of life up here and took himself out of it."

"Why are we looking at this?"

Lirrit Ofka came over, leaned against Elmas Ofka, arm curled loosely about her waist. "Yuk."

The eyepoint was hovering over a nest of scavenger moles big as hunting cats, the young nosing blindly at the side of one while another heavily gravid female was regurgitating sc.r.a.ps of anonymous meat for half a dozen yearlings.